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In the near future, your phone might be smart enough to know whether you are driving a car, or going along for the ride. Anti-distraction software by a tech startup called Cellepathy would automatically go into a restrictive “driver mode” when a phone is within a moving vehicle. Online features such as texts, video, games and social media would be blocked, as well as some or all nonemergency telephone calls.
Your cellphone is like an airplane’s black box. It contains a compass, a gyroscope, an accelerometer and GPS tracking.
Using those features and the software, vehicle passengers could perform a verification task, lasting seven seconds or less, to unlock all the apps in “passenger mode.” For instance, they would hold a phone level and type in a series of numbers.
Cellepathy co-founder Dan Abramson recently moved from Tel Aviv to Sammamish, where he says the company will recruit engineers from this region. The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Israel and some European firms are requiring employees to use Cellepathy, which he said has begun to market to customers in North America.
“Our contribution to the world is our ability to differentiate between drivers and passengers,” he says, a useful goal until self-driving cars someday rule the road.
“We can prevent a lot of deaths, injuries and tragedies over the next 40 years, and if we can make an honest wage for our efforts, that’s great.”
The quest for technical solutions comes while states gradually pass laws to reduce distracted driving, including Washington’s Driving Under the Influence of Electronics act, which takes effect July 23. It bans watching video or using a handheld phone or other device while driving.
Apple announced this week its “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode, to be installed in iOS 11 software this fall. Once a phone owner has chosen this mode, the iPhone…
June 12, 2017 at 10:46PM
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