[ed209]

In 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver. 3,267 in 2010. [1]

When you say "This reduces distraction." you mean compared to holding the phone and doing those actions, right?

The way I would account for human behavior is to intelligently disable certain functionality as the car is moving. Compared to someone else's life, how important is that text message? Even dictating a text message takes some cognitive load.

Let's not mix the word "safer" and "distracted driving".

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/

[roc]

> "The way I would account for human behavior is to intelligently disable certain functionality as the car is moving. "

This is about the only way to enable intelligent control over device functionality. Absent this additional link, a modern cell phone can't tell a driver from an occupant.

With this, Apple and the car companies offer people a carrot so that they pair their device [1] and now they can limit the distractions: you can control the apps that are available on the car interface, you can pare down the notifications they're receiving (enable DND mode by default while driving), you can disable direct use of the paired device while the car is in motion, etc.

[1] The carrot being GPS and music-selection features already available on many modern car dashboards.

[deveac]

>The way I would account for human behavior is to intelligently disable certain functionality as the car is moving. Compared to someone else's life, how important is that text message?

Thereby ensuring a situation where the person takes their eyes off the road and looks at their seat for their phone, picks it up, and starts reading and replying to texts while barreling down the road in a high velocity chunk of steel.

That's what happens now. Apple's technology aims to prevent that.

>Even dictating a text message takes some cognitive load.

Yes it does. It also is much safer than doing it on your phone as people can and will continue to do, even in states where it is illegal. Apple isn't a legislature. They can't tackle unsafe driver behavior by crafting laws, but they can do so via software offerings.

[btown]

If you intelligently disable in-car functionality (such as GPS when the car is moving), people will reach for another device to get that functionality. It's naive to think that constraints will automatically change users' desires.

[ed209]

I believe Apple is sending out the wrong signal about driving+other activities at the same time.

Sure, people have already picked up bad habits, but that makes it ok to encourage that behavior if they are going to do it anyway?

Maybe Apple does make certain activities less dangerous, but it's still making access to distractions easier and I think that's a bad thing.

[umsm]

Not true. Driving a car with bluetooth, I now see how wonderful and useful this feature is. I don't have to take my eyes off the road and I don't have to hold anything to my ear. Its very very seamless.

If you can't talk while you drive, then you shouldn't have passengers either.

[alexqgb]

Yes, but you're still distracted, and that's the problem.

The obvious difference between a phone call and a conversation had with someone in the car is that the person in the car is also placing their life at risk. Unlike the person who isn't there, they can (a) see and (b) intervene when you're starting to drive like an idiot.

It's not that a live conversation is any less distracting. It's just that it comes with a built in safety mechanism.

[davyjones]

> In 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver. 3,267 in 2010. [1]

That figure should be normalised to make the comparison fair. Presumably, there were more cars on the road in 2011 than in 2010.

[MichaelGG]

So essentially, phones should just turn themselves off when moving? I find it highly unlikely that such a law would get any traction (implementation seems rather difficult - by the time it's fully deployed, we'd have been better off putting efforts into self-driving cars). Companies have no chance of implementing this optionally: Why would I buy a car/phone I can't use as a passenger? Deaf passengers would be doubly upset, as the presumably-allowed voice-control features wouldn't be accessible to them.