News flash from Australia: bus driver video'ed fiddling with his mobile phone while driving at high speed down the highway. This sort of thing happens all the time all over the world, of course, but rarely is it so blatantly caught on video.

I found this video especially compelling, because the idea of VoiZapp came to me after being pulled over by the police in Melbourne Australia while doing exactly this. I was using my iPhone's mapping function while driving on a surface street near St. Kilda, not being aware that it is against the law there for a driver to even hold a mobile phone. Ruminations after this episode led to the idea of Friends Aloud, which led to the entire line of VoiZapp products that you now see on this website and in the App Store.

 

From a Mashable article published this morning:

As more automakers move towards adding social media in cars, Transportation secretary Ray LaHood, has a word of advice: Stop.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, LaHood said he is lobbying automakers not to add features that could distract drivers. “There’s absolutely no reason for any person to download their Facebook into the car,” LaHood said in the interview, showing a shaky command of social media terminology. “It’s not necessary.”

LaHood’s opinion on the matter is significant: He and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which reports to him, can force automakers to stop adding social media feeds to new cars. He is also pushing for them to create public service campaigns against texting and driving. So far, two automakers — Subaru and BMW — have done so. BMW’s campaign, showing an overprotective mom who nevertheless endangers her kids by texting and driving, went live on June 3.

Despite LaHood’s opposition, many carmakers are busy integrating social media hooks into their new models. Toyota, for instance, inked a deal with Salesforce.com last month to create “Toyota Friend,” a social network for Toyota drivers. Toyota is also working with Microsoft on a software system called Entune that will let drivers access a version of Bing and Pandora. General Motors has also recently added a feature to some models that lets drivers access real-time Facebook status updates. GM touted that feature in a Super Bowl ad for its Chevy Cruze.

This article that appears in the New York Times today discusses what VoiZapp is trying to accomplish:

May 9, 2011, 5:28 PM

By STEVE LOHR

There are at least two irrefutable facts about the practice of people communicating by cellphones while driving cars. First, it is a big problem, with studies estimating that more than 500,000 traffic accidents and 2,600 deaths a year are caused by cellphone-distracted drivers. No one hasdocumented the problem as thoroughly as my colleague, Matt Richtel.

The second is that cars are not going to become monastic cones of silence. America is a car culture, and the pressures of modern work and life mean that people are going to communicate from their cars, despite the potential danger.

The real issue, then, is how best to reduce the risk. Education is going to help by making people more aware. One thing to be aware of, according to recent research, is that hands-free calling does not help much, if at all. The big trouble is that human communication distracts the brain, slowing recognition and reaction times.

In a paper presented on Monday at a research conference in Vancouver, Eric Horvitz, a scientist at Microsoft Research, and three collaborators provide evidence that a properly designed computer assistant could do a lot to reduce distracted-driving accidents. Bring some artificial intelligence to the car, they suggest, and the safety payoff could be well worth it.

The paper, “Hang on a Sec! Effects of Proactive Mediation of Phone Conversations while Driving,” lays out the results of research done with people conversing on a hands-free phone while at the wheel of a driving simulator.

The volunteers drove through a simulated environment while answering questions like, “When did you last get gas for your car?” and “Name the last movie you saw.” Questions that require recall are more cognitively demanding than other conversation, researchers say.

The drivers had to navigate through city streets, pedestrian crosswalks and frequent turns. Their performance was measured on comparably difficult routes both when their conversations were interrupted by the “semi-smart mediation technology,” as Mr. Horvitz puts it, and when they were not.

The alerts tried out ranged from a short message simply stating, “Focus needed,” to more descriptive messages like “residential neighborhood ahead with children playing.” And calls could be put on hold, typically for 10 to 25 seconds, while the driver navigated through a setting that required maximum attention to the road.

In the simulated course, drivers did better with the semi-smart helper offering driving tips and interrupting conversations than when they talked and drove continuously. When assisted, the drivers had on average 27 percent fewer collision errors and 81 percent fewer turning errors.

“I think we could see a significant drop in traffic accidents using this kind of system,” said Mr. Horvitz, whose three co-authors were Shamsi Iqbal and Yun-Cheng Ju of Microsoft Research, and Ella Matthews, a student at the California Institute of Technology.

The research initiative was a “proof of concept” project, not a working system. But the ability of modern computing to tap and mine large Web-based data sets — road conditions, weather, accident reports — and deliver answers in real time is opening the door to such systems in cars.

One large car company, Mr. Horvitz said, has expressed an interest in his team’s research. Within five years, he predict, computer-safety assistants could become commonplace — if automakers pursue safety services and regulators prod things along. Perhaps this is the equivalent of digital seat belts?

“Cars will begin to tell people about road conditions and potential dangers,” Mr. Horvitz said.