Discovery News: New Cell Phone Could Reduce Car Crashes

By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
Oct. 6, 2005— A new phone in development at Motorola could make driving safer.

The prototype, nicknamed the "polite phone," is able to interpret driving conditions and decide whether to let calls through to the driver, send them to voice mail, or even contact 911.
"People are using various devices in automobiles in ways that may or may not affect driver focus," said Mike Gardner, director of intelligent systems research at Motorola's Driving Simulator Lab in Tempe, Ariz.
"So we asked, 'Is there any way possible that we could cause the devices themselves to change their behavior depending on the driving situation?'" Gardner said.
The answer was a phone that taps into a car's computer system. It starts with Motorola-designed software installed on the car's computer that can analyze driving conditions based on such things as speed, braking, acceleration and turn signals.
That data is funneled through a small electronic component — about an inch-and-a-half cube — which can be plugged into one of the car's computer ports.
Information about the driving conditions is relayed from the component to the phone via a wireless signal. Software on the cell phone uses the data to control how the phone operates inside the car.
For example, as soon as the driver sits in the car, the phone will automatically switch to speaker, allowing hands-free communication.
As the driver cruises along at a steady speed, the phone will filter out undesired or unnecessary calls, as predetermined by the driver.
If the car goes into a complex driving maneuver, such as sudden braking or turning, the cell phone will automatically send any incoming calls to voice mail.
If the air bag deploys, the phone will dial 911 and leave the line open.
"There is a lot of evidence that driving and using the phone increases the risk of driving by a factor of four," said Paul Green, research professor and leader of the Driver Interface Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.
But people do it anyway, he said. "Therefore, building a system for unwise behavior is really a good thing to do."
The challenges, said Green, involve figuring out what information to process from the car's computer and how.
A signal from the computer can specify steering angle, speed, tire angle, and GPS data, for example, but how do the numbers and the endless combination of them indicate a potentially dangerous driving maneuver?
More studies involving human drivers need to be carried out in order to correlate the human response with the computer data.
According to Gardner, Motorola's next step is to bring in large numbers of subjects and have them use the concept in different driving situations in order to quantify the impact the polite phone may have on safety.
Gardner will be presenting the polite phone this week at the International Conference on Distracted Driving in Toronto.