Anti-Texting Key A Key to Teen Safety?
The young woman in a Corolla had the slows, yet was swerving as if drunk. When I pulled alongside of her at a stoplight, I saw that she was texting. As we took off, after the light changed, she continued to text and swerve and text and swerve. Two years ago, University of Utah professor Frank Drews told me that an estimated 60 percent of teen drivers text while driving. Activities such as texting, with multiple steps that take your eyes off the road for more than two seconds, are far more dangerous than talking on the cell phone. This according to the 100 Car Study by Virginia Tech researchers, in which video cameras recorded drivers over a year. For example, dialing and talking were responsible for equal numbers of cell phone-related mishaps and near mishaps, despite the fact that far more time is spent talking than dialing. And now, there may be a technological fix…
The University of Utah has developed an automobile ignition key that prevents the use of cell phone tech while driving. The key connects wirelessly with each key users cell phone via Bluetooth or radio-frequency identification technology, to prevent its use for dialing anything but 911 and numbers pre-approved by the parents. When not in the ignition, the key is placed in a special device that blocks these signals. This so-called Key2SafeDriving would probably be licensed to cell phone service providers to include in their service plans.
I'm a freelance journalist covering science, medicine, and automobiles.
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Teenage drivers should all be driving 1987 Honda Civics that pull to the left and have no shock absorbers left. Any problem related to not paying attention to the road will immediately disappear.
(I'm 18, in high school.) I don't text while I drive. I don't talk on the phone while I drive (or, if I do, it's a very, very short conversation (under ten seconds)). I don't eat while I drive. I rarely even listen to music while I drive. Nope. I just drive... Hell, I pay more attention to what's going on than the policemen do. A cop cut me off on the highway the other day, then parked himself in the left lane at 45 MPH. All the idiots driving around him immediately slowed down, too, since you're obviously going to get pulled over for doing the speed limit (65 MPH) just because a cop is in the vicinity! Morons. And I've got to agree with the commenter above who said most teens these days are not really very "hip" with technology. I would add to that, however, that most teens aren't very hip with... much of anything. I deal with the most helpless people these days. They may know how to do things, but they don't know how to fix things if something goes wrong. It's just like in school. They may know how to read (sort of), but they don't know how to learn. (In my government class, a girl asked me where she could find the answers to a worksheet. The top of the worksheet clearly read "Chapter 14, section 3." I told her this, but she still didn't get it. "What page is that?" "I don't know. Why don't you find it?" "How?" "Well, gee, you see those chapter and section numbers at the bottom of the page? They change as you turn pages! Find where it says 'Chapter 14, section 3'. Here, is this it? 'Chapter 9, section 2'? Nope! Keep going!" I'm not making this up. And after all that, she called me an unhelpful jerk. A jerk!) I actually wrote a lot more, but this is already very off topic, so I've cut out what was after that last paragraph. Me? Bitter? Nah.
Low power cell phone jammer discretely hidden under a front seat. With an official looking label on it that says its part of the stereo system, in case your target is curious and tech savvy. Illegal as hell in the US, but it would work. And they are available, albeit probably for a greater range than the car interior.