8 ms·

Sonalight (YC W12) Lets You Text While Driving Without Touching A Phone

84 points by sskates 15y ago

pavel_lishin 15y ago
Haven't studies shown that it's not the physical act of interacting with a phone that causes distraction, but rather focusing on conversing with someone not physically present?
- aseemk 15y ago
  I dunno about studies, but for me it's definitely the eyes-not-on-the-road. I'm so thankful I haven't gotten into a crash despite the few times I've been stupid enough to text while driving.
  - derwiki 15y ago
    http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/CognitiveDistraction.aspx http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/Cogn... "While many people know texting while driving increases crash risk, the lack of understanding about the risks of phone conversation while driving remains a challenge. Talking on hands-free or handheld cell phones requires the brain to multitask – a process it cannot do safely while driving."
  - Lagged2Death 15y ago
    Part of the problem with continuous partial attention, like the problem with alcohol, is that the practitioner/victim loses the ability to judge his/her own performance accurately.
- toomuchtodo 15y ago
  http://distraction.gov/research/PDF-Files/Comparison-of-CellPhone-Driver-Drunk-Driver.pdf http://distraction.gov/research/PDF-Files/Comparison-of-Cell... "Using a cell phone while driving - whether it's hand-held or hands-free delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (University of Utah)"
  - nostromo 15y ago
    Quickly reading though that, it doesn't strike me as convincing. People drinking to 0.08 drove slower, braked faster (!), had normal reaction times, and got in 0 accidents. Yet the study says they are more aggressive because they followed the car in front of them by 9.5 meters instead of 10.3. This study doesn't make me think hands-free sets should be illegal, but that the blood alcohol limit level is too low.
- colanderman 15y ago
  Intuitively I would expect composing a text via voice to be more distraction than holding a conversation: for me, the very act of composing necessitates visualizing the composition.
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  Perhaps, but I'm less concerned about getting in an accident than I am getting busted by the police for using my hand held while driving (for those of us in such places). This, hopefully, solves that!
PhrosTT 15y ago
"Amazingly, the trick even works when the phone is just sitting there, its screen black, and sleeping. Say “text by voice” and it wakes up" I'm pretty sure this is impossible without aggressive battery draw. Altho if you're driving you can be using a car charger. The GPS already makes this neccessary unless you want to risk killing your phone before it guides you home. It would be nice if they could hook into the 'car dock' app or google maps nav - so that their background service auto launches when those launch. I believe that's possible with some egregious permissions. Also maybe get the 'charger in' permission and actively listen whenever the phone is plugged in. Cool idea.
- jaredhansen 15y ago
  >I'm pretty sure this is impossible without battery rape. I'm starting to sound like a broken record on HN about this, but this kind of comment trivializes actual, no-kidding rape by comparing it to a low battery, and comes across as inherently misogynistic even if you didn't intend it that way. If we really want to be serious about opening up tech and getting more women involved, and more importantly if we want a world with less rape in it, we've got to cut this kind of thing out.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - PhrosTT 15y ago
    Sorry. Fixed.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > inherently misogynistic Men get raped, too.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
abbasmehdi 15y ago
Wonder how many traffic accidents these guys will prevent? I am guessing a lot! Actually, they will also prevent tickets you get from texting while driving in California. I have gotten one and it sucked! Definitely worth trying, especially for a hyper-connected road warrior like myself.
- esharef 15y ago
  Wow, I am the worst offender in terms of driving and texting. Pretty scary (and stupid on the part of those of us who do text and drive) since according to Wikipedia, "the risk of crashing while texting /driving increases by 23 times, because reading or sending a text diverts the driver's eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds" I'm from Germany which has really strict laws on this and all phone activity (texting, calling, emailing) is forbidden while the engine is on (leave it to the Germans to be this strict).
  - stingraycharles 15y ago
    Not only in Germany, it's a common restriction in many European countries: see page 44 of http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Report_Nomadic_Devices.pdf http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Report_Nomadic_Devices.pdf for a list of legislations in Europe in 2009.
- sskates 15y ago
  Somehow in spite of all the risk and PR campaigns, one third of drivers still choose to text and drive[1]. We're happy to play a small part in reducing the number of accidents by providing a safer alternative. [1] http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/2011HUDWRelease.pdf http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/2011HUDWRelease.pdf
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    We're happy to play a small part in reducing the number of accidents by providing a safer alternative. Do you have any studies that show your app is, in fact, safer?
michaelmwu 15y ago
Nice job guys! The Google voice settings are a little clunky though.
- mehuln 15y ago
  Wish my siri-less iPhone had this option.
- sskates 15y ago
  Sorry, it's not the smoothest! We're still working on improving that part of the UI.
dannyr 15y ago
I was watching PG's interview on Bloomberg yesterday on he said that most YC startups choose to develop on iOS first then port it to Android. (I can't remember if he said he advises startups to do iOS first before Android). My guess is this is cannot be easily done on iOS. Android's API has been more open than iOS.
- sskates 15y ago
  We did choose to start with Android because it has more powerful APIs. We don't want to cut out half of the smartphone market though, so we'll get once we're happy with Android we'll move onto iOS.
  - PhrosTT 15y ago
    The upside to Android is you can push fixes to market in a matter of hours - so you can iterate faster and worry less about accidentally pushing crippling bugs.
    - sskates 15y ago
      This is absolutely correct and I had forgotten about this huge advantage until you just mentioned it. We've been on a very aggressive release schedule, pushing major overhauls to the app every 2 weeks since we started in August. It definitely wouldn't have been possible to move as fast on iOS.
      - jansen 15y ago
        I can assure you that the process of iteration is horrible on iOS. It's awful to be in the situation having a team that is able to learn fast and develop improvements within days, but then having to wait a 7 day cycle for every new improvement or test. Plus from time to time Apple will just reject you - last weekend our update (a bug fix update!) was rejected because of a method name we were carrying for months. This is really not helping anybody, neither app developers nor users.
- GlennFarrant 15y ago
raccoonone 15y ago
Wow, this is awesome! Definitely gonna try this out next time I'm driving and texting...I mean, driving and thinking about texting! ;)
- sskates 15y ago
  Somehow it's one of these things that everyone does but nobody admits to. Any way we can make driving safer is a win.
FiddlerClamp 15y ago
How is this different or better than Vlingo? (Which by the way uses a more generic wake-up request - "Hey, Vlingo")
- sskates 15y ago
  Vlingo's interaction is mostly hands-free, but there are a lot of points where it really wants you to push a button or read the text on-screen. We've also found it's confusing for first time users who want to send text messages, while we've tried to make it almost impossible to mess up while using our app. Small anecdote: I knew we were onto something when I got my mom a new Android phone for Christmas and she managed to send a text without a hiccup on her first try- she had never used voice tech or even a smartphone up to that point.
slug 15y ago
How does it deal with a PIN protected phone when in sleep mode? Maybe there's a security issue there or does it ask for the PIN through voice?
- sskates 15y ago
  It won't be able to popup behind the locked screen because of the security issues you mention, but you can still use the app through voice. The worst an attacker that got hold of your phone could do is use the app to send text messages and read any messages that the phone received while they had control of it.
myko 15y ago
Voice commands already do most of this on Android pretty easily, and have for a long time. It looks like the real advantage here is setting it up before you start driving and being able to interact without long pressing the search button - but that seems pretty rough on the battery.
- sskates 15y ago
  We agree a large part of the advantage is not touching the phone at all. I disagree about voice commands though- if you put that app in the hands of someone who's never used it before, most people will give up before they successfully send a text.
flyingobj 15y ago
Any plans to move on to gtalk or maybe gmail? I'm trying to avoid txting in general. Love the product, it's running whenever I drive alone. Thanks
- sskates 15y ago
  Glad you like it! We'll definitely move to email and chat once we get texting down perfectly. We still have a ways to go.
JulianMorrison 15y ago
Clever but stupid. You divide your attention this way and you will end up dead in a ditch.
- sskates 15y ago
  It's a shame that we get this reaction. Emergency workers, truck drivers, and couriers all use our app and find it really helpful because they have to spend all day driving and want a safe way to communicate. (My favorite is a group of patrol officers in Kentucky who have Android phones attached to docks in their squad cars and use our app.) Somehow even though it's risky and illegal, one third of drivers choose to text and drive. It's hard to get solid numbers, but around a few thousand people die every year in the US because of this, as well as causing hundreds of thousands of injuries[1]. Any way we can make driving safer overall is a net win. http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20Estimate%20Summary.pdf http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20...
  - zafer 15y ago
    People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the positive direction, no doubt about it.
    - jamesbritt 15y ago
      People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the positive direction, no doubt about it. _Safe_, or just safer? There can be problems with people thinking that risk has been reduced or eliminated; it can encourage more risky behavior. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18217318 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1821731... "It seems counterintuitive to give drivers less information, by taking away street signs, stop lights and lane markings, to make them drive more safely." Also, http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/helmets-nyt.html http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/helmets-nyt.html "Specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: Riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks." Absent specific studies on this there's room for doubt about "much more safer".
mirsadm 15y ago
What are you guys using for voice recognition? Seems to be having some trouble with my Australian/German/Eastern European accent :)
- sskates 15y ago
  Sorry it's giving you so much trouble! We're using Google's default voice recognition engine. It does allow for different accents, but we haven't turned this ability on in the app. If it's getting names wrong, you can also try spelling the contact name one letter at a time, that usually works for people.
LilValleyBigEgo 15y ago
Y'know, I really don't need to text while driving that badly.
tuananh 15y ago
I'm not a fan of texting/calling while driving. I wouldn't text someone while driving, nor replying. If it's urgent, people wouldn't text me anyway.
dutchbrit 15y ago
Tested this out yesterday on a friends Android Phone, very impressive to say the least. Voice to Text... - Who do you want to text? Nobody - Aborting (something along these lines at least). Shame it's not possible for the iPhone, activating an app via voice while it's sleeping. Very cool! Shame that you can't select your language (Dutch/French/German etc...) - I wonder if this uses the Google Voice API?
- sskates 15y ago
  We do use the built in speech recognition that's part of Android. We definitely want to do other languages (and luckily Google supports a lot of languages), but are focusing on English for the short term and will expand once we get that right.

84 points by sskates 15y ago

Haven't studies shown that it's not the physical act of interacting with a phone that causes distraction, but rather focusing on conversing with someone not physically present?

aseemk 15y ago
I dunno about studies, but for me it's definitely the eyes-not-on-the-road. I'm so thankful I haven't gotten into a crash despite the few times I've been stupid enough to text while driving.
- derwiki 15y ago
  http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/CognitiveDistraction.aspx http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/Cogn... "While many people know texting while driving increases crash risk, the lack of understanding about the risks of phone conversation while driving remains a challenge. Talking on hands-free or handheld cell phones requires the brain to multitask – a process it cannot do safely while driving."
- Lagged2Death 15y ago
  Part of the problem with continuous partial attention, like the problem with alcohol, is that the practitioner/victim loses the ability to judge his/her own performance accurately.
toomuchtodo 15y ago
http://distraction.gov/research/PDF-Files/Comparison-of-CellPhone-Driver-Drunk-Driver.pdf http://distraction.gov/research/PDF-Files/Comparison-of-Cell... "Using a cell phone while driving - whether it's hand-held or hands-free delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (University of Utah)"
- nostromo 15y ago
  Quickly reading though that, it doesn't strike me as convincing. People drinking to 0.08 drove slower, braked faster (!), had normal reaction times, and got in 0 accidents. Yet the study says they are more aggressive because they followed the car in front of them by 9.5 meters instead of 10.3. This study doesn't make me think hands-free sets should be illegal, but that the blood alcohol limit level is too low.
colanderman 15y ago
Intuitively I would expect composing a text via voice to be more distraction than holding a conversation: for me, the very act of composing necessitates visualizing the composition.
tatsuke95 15y ago
Perhaps, but I'm less concerned about getting in an accident than I am getting busted by the police for using my hand held while driving (for those of us in such places). This, hopefully, solves that!

PhrosTT 15y ago

"Amazingly, the trick even works when the phone is just sitting there, its screen black, and sleeping. Say “text by voice” and it wakes up" I'm pretty sure this is impossible without aggressive battery draw. Altho if you're driving you can be using a car charger. The GPS already makes this neccessary unless you want to risk killing your phone before it guides you home. It would be nice if they could hook into the 'car dock' app or google maps nav - so that their background service auto launches when those launch. I believe that's possible with some egregious permissions. Also maybe get the 'charger in' permission and actively listen whenever the phone is plugged in. Cool idea.

jaredhansen 15y ago
>I'm pretty sure this is impossible without battery rape. I'm starting to sound like a broken record on HN about this, but this kind of comment trivializes actual, no-kidding rape by comparing it to a low battery, and comes across as inherently misogynistic even if you didn't intend it that way. If we really want to be serious about opening up tech and getting more women involved, and more importantly if we want a world with less rape in it, we've got to cut this kind of thing out.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- PhrosTT 15y ago
  Sorry. Fixed.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > inherently misogynistic Men get raped, too.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

abbasmehdi 15y ago

Wonder how many traffic accidents these guys will prevent? I am guessing a lot! Actually, they will also prevent tickets you get from texting while driving in California. I have gotten one and it sucked! Definitely worth trying, especially for a hyper-connected road warrior like myself.

esharef 15y ago
Wow, I am the worst offender in terms of driving and texting. Pretty scary (and stupid on the part of those of us who do text and drive) since according to Wikipedia, "the risk of crashing while texting /driving increases by 23 times, because reading or sending a text diverts the driver's eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds" I'm from Germany which has really strict laws on this and all phone activity (texting, calling, emailing) is forbidden while the engine is on (leave it to the Germans to be this strict).
- stingraycharles 15y ago
  Not only in Germany, it's a common restriction in many European countries: see page 44 of http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Report_Nomadic_Devices.pdf http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Report_Nomadic_Devices.pdf for a list of legislations in Europe in 2009.
sskates 15y ago
Somehow in spite of all the risk and PR campaigns, one third of drivers still choose to text and drive[1]. We're happy to play a small part in reducing the number of accidents by providing a safer alternative. [1] http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/2011HUDWRelease.pdf http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/2011HUDWRelease.pdf
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  We're happy to play a small part in reducing the number of accidents by providing a safer alternative. Do you have any studies that show your app is, in fact, safer?

michaelmwu 15y ago

Nice job guys! The Google voice settings are a little clunky though.

mehuln 15y ago
Wish my siri-less iPhone had this option.
sskates 15y ago
Sorry, it's not the smoothest! We're still working on improving that part of the UI.

dannyr 15y ago

I was watching PG's interview on Bloomberg yesterday on he said that most YC startups choose to develop on iOS first then port it to Android. (I can't remember if he said he advises startups to do iOS first before Android). My guess is this is cannot be easily done on iOS. Android's API has been more open than iOS.

sskates 15y ago
We did choose to start with Android because it has more powerful APIs. We don't want to cut out half of the smartphone market though, so we'll get once we're happy with Android we'll move onto iOS.
- PhrosTT 15y ago
  The upside to Android is you can push fixes to market in a matter of hours - so you can iterate faster and worry less about accidentally pushing crippling bugs.
  - sskates 15y ago
    This is absolutely correct and I had forgotten about this huge advantage until you just mentioned it. We've been on a very aggressive release schedule, pushing major overhauls to the app every 2 weeks since we started in August. It definitely wouldn't have been possible to move as fast on iOS.
    - jansen 15y ago
      I can assure you that the process of iteration is horrible on iOS. It's awful to be in the situation having a team that is able to learn fast and develop improvements within days, but then having to wait a 7 day cycle for every new improvement or test. Plus from time to time Apple will just reject you - last weekend our update (a bug fix update!) was rejected because of a method name we were carrying for months. This is really not helping anybody, neither app developers nor users.
GlennFarrant 15y ago

raccoonone 15y ago

Wow, this is awesome! Definitely gonna try this out next time I'm driving and texting...I mean, driving and thinking about texting! ;)

sskates 15y ago
Somehow it's one of these things that everyone does but nobody admits to. Any way we can make driving safer is a win.

FiddlerClamp 15y ago

How is this different or better than Vlingo? (Which by the way uses a more generic wake-up request - "Hey, Vlingo")

sskates 15y ago
Vlingo's interaction is mostly hands-free, but there are a lot of points where it really wants you to push a button or read the text on-screen. We've also found it's confusing for first time users who want to send text messages, while we've tried to make it almost impossible to mess up while using our app. Small anecdote: I knew we were onto something when I got my mom a new Android phone for Christmas and she managed to send a text without a hiccup on her first try- she had never used voice tech or even a smartphone up to that point.

slug 15y ago

How does it deal with a PIN protected phone when in sleep mode? Maybe there's a security issue there or does it ask for the PIN through voice?

sskates 15y ago
It won't be able to popup behind the locked screen because of the security issues you mention, but you can still use the app through voice. The worst an attacker that got hold of your phone could do is use the app to send text messages and read any messages that the phone received while they had control of it.

myko 15y ago

Voice commands already do most of this on Android pretty easily, and have for a long time. It looks like the real advantage here is setting it up before you start driving and being able to interact without long pressing the search button - but that seems pretty rough on the battery.

sskates 15y ago
We agree a large part of the advantage is not touching the phone at all. I disagree about voice commands though- if you put that app in the hands of someone who's never used it before, most people will give up before they successfully send a text.

flyingobj 15y ago

Any plans to move on to gtalk or maybe gmail? I'm trying to avoid txting in general. Love the product, it's running whenever I drive alone. Thanks

sskates 15y ago
Glad you like it! We'll definitely move to email and chat once we get texting down perfectly. We still have a ways to go.

JulianMorrison 15y ago

Clever but stupid. You divide your attention this way and you will end up dead in a ditch.

sskates 15y ago
It's a shame that we get this reaction. Emergency workers, truck drivers, and couriers all use our app and find it really helpful because they have to spend all day driving and want a safe way to communicate. (My favorite is a group of patrol officers in Kentucky who have Android phones attached to docks in their squad cars and use our app.) Somehow even though it's risky and illegal, one third of drivers choose to text and drive. It's hard to get solid numbers, but around a few thousand people die every year in the US because of this, as well as causing hundreds of thousands of injuries[1]. Any way we can make driving safer overall is a net win. http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20Estimate%20Summary.pdf http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20...
- zafer 15y ago
  People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the positive direction, no doubt about it.
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the positive direction, no doubt about it. _Safe_, or just safer? There can be problems with people thinking that risk has been reduced or eliminated; it can encourage more risky behavior. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18217318 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1821731... "It seems counterintuitive to give drivers less information, by taking away street signs, stop lights and lane markings, to make them drive more safely." Also, http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/helmets-nyt.html http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/helmets-nyt.html "Specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: Riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks." Absent specific studies on this there's room for doubt about "much more safer".

mirsadm 15y ago

What are you guys using for voice recognition? Seems to be having some trouble with my Australian/German/Eastern European accent :)

sskates 15y ago
Sorry it's giving you so much trouble! We're using Google's default voice recognition engine. It does allow for different accents, but we haven't turned this ability on in the app. If it's getting names wrong, you can also try spelling the contact name one letter at a time, that usually works for people.

LilValleyBigEgo 15y ago

Y'know, I really don't need to text while driving that badly.

tuananh 15y ago

I'm not a fan of texting/calling while driving. I wouldn't text someone while driving, nor replying. If it's urgent, people wouldn't text me anyway.

dutchbrit 15y ago

Tested this out yesterday on a friends Android Phone, very impressive to say the least. Voice to Text... - Who do you want to text? Nobody - Aborting (something along these lines at least). Shame it's not possible for the iPhone, activating an app via voice while it's sleeping. Very cool! Shame that you can't select your language (Dutch/French/German etc...) - I wonder if this uses the Google Voice API?

sskates 15y ago
We do use the built in speech recognition that's part of Android. We definitely want to do other languages (and luckily Google supports a lot of languages), but are focusing on English for the short term and will expand once we get that right.