Distracted Driving: The Promise and Perils of In-Car Voice Recognition
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driver distraction is a factor in 16 percent of fatal crashes, 25 percent of all car accidents are due to talking on cell phones, and three percent result from texting. Bluetooth use won't spare you -- these stats include accidents involving hands-free operation.
One answer that at least keeps your hands on the wheel is voice recognition software. Potentially, it keeps drivers from staring at their tiny screens as they text or respond to email, but it's only a partial solution.
There's a hugely lucrative and newly emerging market for voice recognition software in cars. As I've reported, Ford is investing heavily in the next generation its Sync In-Car Communications and Entertainment System.
But no matter what the software proponents say, voice recognition commands are distracting, too. Many crashes involve people simply not paying attention, so even if your hands are free, your concentration is elsewhere.
The Mississippi State Department of Health echoes much current thinking when it reports, "Do not make or answer cell phone calls, even with hands-free and voice recognition devices. If you must make an emergency call, leave the road and park in a safe area."
But such advice may not get heeded. A recent Virginia Tech study cited by Ford found that while 86 percent of licensed drivers describe texting while driving as "very dangerous, only 42 percent believe drivers would stop texting if it was banned. But 75 percent believe people would use voice recognition as an alternative if it were more widely available.
This explains why voice recognition companies are a little defensive these days. Louis Hayner, the chief sales officer at Alteva, which makes $14 a month voice-over-IP software that interacts with Microsoft Exchange, told me, "We don't even recommend talking on a Bluetooth phone while driving. We're not encouraging people to use our software while driving, but if they're going to do it anyway we want to make sure they do it safely."
I took part in an Alteva demonstration and the software worked extremely well. The synthesized voice was natural and did a great job of not only reading email messages, but also of telling me who had sent them. You can say, "open mailbox," and it will then scroll through, saying "next message." The voicemail interface was seamless, too. You can also say a contact's name, and Alteva will ask if you want to call the person's office or cell phone.
Of course, there's not much point to Alteva's software if you're not using it while driving. There's a sense of inevitability here, the company says in a press release: "Remote workers need to be in constant and direct contact whether they are following up on a new lead, connecting with someone from their office, or letting a client know they'll be 15 minutes late for a meeting."
Try keeping that guy who's stuck in traffic while his client looks at his watch from using his cell phone. The only way to stop him is with something like ZoomSafer, which is software that -- far from easing behind-the-wheel cell phone use -- actually prevents it. It tracks how fast a person is physically moving, and then locks their phone if they're at car speeds. It even informs would-be communicants that the target of their message is driving and can't text.
ZoomSafer's argument is the opposite of Alteva's, and there's evidence ZoomSafer is right. According to a Risk and Insurance magazine webinar, distracted driving is one of the top insurance losses for corporations, "averaging $100,000 per incident." In one case the magazine cites, a company had to pay out $18 million after a driving employee checked his corporate cell phone, causing an accident that left three dead and 15 injured.
ZoomSafer makes draconian videos, like the one here, that warn companies of their liability if they let their employees use their phones on the road. And it has messages for teens, too:
But wait a minute. Of course, voice recognition software does make driving safer. If the driver in the incident above had been using Alteva software his eyes would have been on the road. But the safest thing, obviously, is not calling or texting at all. This argument is likely to go on for quite a while.
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Photo: Oregon DOT