{"id":704,"date":"2010-10-04T11:03:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T16:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/?p=704"},"modified":"2010-10-04T11:03:09","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T16:03:09","slug":"texting-while-driving-really-folks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/04\/texting-while-driving-really-folks\/","title":{"rendered":"Texting while driving — really, folks?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In just the past week, this humble primate has received multiple emails, twitter messages (and followers), and blog comments promoting wonderful new products that claim to permit safe texting while driving. I think most are in response to my post entitled “silly ideas about safe texting<\/a>.” I’m guessing most of these are just spammers who see something about “safe texting” and think I’m sympathetic to their promotions. Silly hairless apes.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple examples:<\/p>\n

Driveradvocate.com (posted the following comment to my previous post that I subsequently blocked as spam): <\/p>\n

With 39 States having “No Phone or Texting While Driving” Laws in effect by October 1, 2010 you can save yourself the embarrassment and humiliation by getting a new HandsFree way to make phone calls and texting while driving assistance from “Kylee” your new Virtual Assistant provided here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oooh… wouldn’t want to be humiliated, would we.<\/p>\n

My tweets (@invisgorilla) are now being followed by VoiceAssist<\/a>, whose website has a big banner stating: <\/p>\n

“Keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Text, call and email all by voice command.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To their credit, many of their tweets are about the dangers of distracted driving. But, the danger from talking on a phone has nothing to do with keeping your hands on the wheel, and people can miss critical events on the road even when looking right at them. The problem is with your head, not your eyes.<\/p>\n

The idea behind all products like these is fundamentally flawed \u2014 the premise is that texting while driving can somehow be made safe by using voice recognition. But, just as hands-free phones aren’t really safer than hand-held phones, voice recognition won’t solve the problem for texters. (It might help a tiny bit for bad texters, but texting will still be even more dangerous than driving while talking on a phone.) The problem is that generating a text message is hard \u2014 it requires your attention and your focus. If you have ever used dictation software, you know how challenging it can be to generate a concise, clear message verbally. That’s much harder than holding a natural conversation in which your meaning can be clarified and your grammar isn’t as critical. And, holding a hands-free conversation is comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol. Texting is many times worse than that! If you’re focusing on generating a message, you’re not focusing on the road. That’s where the danger comes from, even more than from typing.<\/p>\n

These sorts of claims have dangerous implications. If people believe the hype and think that they can safely text and talk on phones by using voice recognition, they will be even more overconfident in their ability to do so. And, we know that people don’t tend to realize how distracted they are. Anything that makes people more likely to use their phones while driving is a bad thing. Need some evidence? Check out this white paper by the NSC<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I throw 5 really rotten, stinky bananas at companies hawking products that encourage people to text and drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Silly claims that hands-free texting would somehow make it safe to text while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attention","category-confidence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":714,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}