I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this, but since all smartphones have GPS built-in it wouldn’t be difficult for manufacturers to link this to their texting functions. IOW when you press Text Messaging it engages the phone’s GPS for a moment, and if it detects motion above walking rates, say above 10-15mph, it simply locks out texting until the speed slows. Simple eh?
I know that built-in car head units do this already, lock out certain functions while driving, but has anyone read about this idea being implemented for smartphones themselves? Should I run to the Patent Office?
Assuming that the default apps get locked out by GPS, for android, iphone and I’m sure windows devices… you can just download a texting app that doesn’t check GPS.
You would have to legislate that all texting apps would only work if you are not moving above walking speeds. …Then you would need 100% compliance from software developers… and i’m sure that’ll work.
I imagine third party texting apps still probably have to use some kind of internal SMS API or some such - so it would probably be possible to lock that down (although this could probably be circumvented by munging the actual GPS location data somehow, or jailbreaking/rooting the phone and patching the bit of code that links the GPS and SMS functions).
But (apart from the passenger problem I mentioned above), it assumes that reliable GPS location data is available - that’s just not always the case for a handheld phone inside of a vehicle (dash-mounted devices have a better view of the sky, and dedicated GPS devices have a better antenna)
Some (GPS based) Smartphone Apps already “sort of” do this – pop up a screen that says “application unavailable while driving” with two options (paraphrased): “Uh… OK, bye” and “I am not the driver.”
Pressing “I am not the driver” allows you to continue.
Obviously this won’t stop anyone *determined *to text and drive, but it could help somewhat by getting the clueless to put down the phone and leaving us to deal only with the willfully endangering. And it will sure cut into their (not really…) “plausible deniability” - “officer, I’m sorry, I got carried away and didn’t notice.” “You mean you didn’t see the big honking “I am not the driver” button that you had to press in order to text-and-swerve…? :dubious:”
ETA: So in principle you could add this feature to applications that are often abused by drivers; I agree with whoever stated above that you’d never get 100% developer compliance, not be able to reach those who will just turn off their GPS (for apps that don’t actually require it.)
