It seems like CarPlay an Android Auto should work against this trend. Maybe cars with those features aren't entering the pool fast enough to overcome how much our attention on our phones is growing?
distracted != tapping on your phone
Having a handless call in your car arguing about what to buy at groceries in your return trip from work with your significant other can be a dangerous distraction. Sure your eyes may be steered towards the road but your focus might be somewhere else and make you miss important stuff. Or telling the kids at the back to shut up and stop fighting.
I wish people would be more aware of that and wouldn't think they can just drive their car as if it was an extension to their living room.
There is a very simple technological solution to this - disable screens on phones in motion faster than xmph - but people are violently against this minor inconvenience for passengers and mass transport commuters for the same reason drivers can't put their phone down, so this problem will likely continue to get worse, especially as the younger generation becomes drivers.
That's why people are against it - the idea of passengers returning to the pre-smartphone era while traveling seems to be considered by most people totally outrageous and and unacceptable price to pay for lowering the accident rate, which has climbed almost solely to due smartphones.
What's totally outrageous and unacceptable is the idea that my phone can tell me when I'm allowed to use it or not, based on arbitrary rules set up by tech clowns who are not in my current situation and do not know why I might need it.
It's frankly asinine to suggest I should not be able to look up a map of a city while riding a bus because someone else might be texting and driving.
Most people would find this outrageous because it is.
If you're the passenger and want to unlock the phone...take a selfie? More psychology than tech here.
This wouldn't affect mass transit commuters since they wouldn't have a car insurance app. The insurance company could sell it as a way to get additional savings...I recently did something similar with safeco that was way more invasive.
Not perfect, but if Im Geico; I have a team mulling over something similar as an easy way to drop accident rates...?
Additionally we could require all phones to support the SafeDriving protocol, and there be dash mounted camera in all cars with appropriate computer vision to identify unsafe phone use while driving lock ALL phones within the car or slow car to the curb.
How about we try and figure out how to train people to be better drivers, and more responsible adults in general, rather than continuing to let people off the hook and treating the whole of society like children that need their phones taken away by big daddy tech?
I hate this sort of petty tech dictatorship stuff.
> How about we try and figure out how to train people to be better drivers, and more responsible adults in general,
You can't. You may improve things at the margins but it will do nothing to the overall trend. Smartphone use is addictive. Consider that decades of cradle-to-grave anti-smoking education with huge amounts of funding combined with immediate financial disincentives (high taxes) succeeded only in lowering the smoking rate to 12%. People are not ideal rational actors.
And smartphones are an even more intractable problem, because we're suggesting educating people out of smartphone addiction, but only out of not using it while they drive. It is simply not possible to educate a sizable proportion of the population out of this. Even strict police enforcement will not make a big difference.
No it wasn't, people have driven with distractions since cars were invented. Eating in the car, arguing with passengers, wrangling children, looking at paper maps, doing their makeup. etc.
The problem is people
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that smartphone addiction increased the scale and severity of the problem by orders of magnitude.
Tech has taken a lot of social problems and poured gas on them, it's not just this one.
In some of those cases it may make sense to place limits on the tech to try and curb that.
And yeah, if there is a tech way to solve this without negatively impacting passengers or commuters, it might be worth exploring.
But my point still stands. This is a social problem, it was not created by smartphones and it therefore cannot be fixed by changing smartphones. At best you can try and mitigate it.
And an effort to mitigate it will never fly if it has to affect every other person that may not even ever drive themselves.
Likewise, listening to the radio is habit forming (some people don’t seem to be able to sit in quiet in their car). But it’s also not nearly as distracting - just turn the radio on and maybe try to change the station.
Ultimately the tech industry needs to first be held responsible and liable for the problems it creates.
Or is it? My car has a warning when it starts up that basically says that the factory installed touchscreen is to dangerous to use while driving and I'm liable for any distractions it causes me.
I've seen plenty of delusional shit on HN when it comes to solving societal problems, and this is easily in top ten.
"Play a different episode"
"Sorry, I have no idea how to do that"
Them: Be scared. AI is really smart and is going to take your job.
In fairness, I think there's reasons they're intentionally making it different to select what you want to play... but WTF is up with that, too.
I wonder though if Apple and Android could remove non-voice functionality from their platforms thereby forcing users to use voice to navigate certain features like song selection.
Or perhaps changing songs mechanically can only be done when the velocity of the vehicle is zero.
I suspect people will be pissed off about those changes, but I think if I were CEO and had the authority, I would sleep better at night knowing I am doing everything to try to curtail pedestrian deaths because of my product.
I’m on the road about 3,000 miles/mo and CarPlay not functioning properly happens so often that I don’t even really notice anymore how often I have to pick up my phone.