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/
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.
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.
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.
If you can't talk while you drive, then you shouldn't have passengers either.
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.
That figure should be normalised to make the comparison fair. Presumably, there were more cars on the road in 2011 than in 2010.
But this is a minor quip compared to how MS implemented Sync Services. It's 2014 and they use a voice(!) line from a pre-registered cell phone to connect to their services.
I assume you're American (or British), because voice-based systems are nearly useless for non-native english speakers.
I'm a fluent english speaker, but due to my non-american accent, and the fact that my language is not one of the top 10 used in the world I still cannot operate Siri (or other voice systems) properly, and the dictation feature is nearly useless to me.
Google's voice recognition system, and of late, Siri both work fine for me. Sync, iPhone 'voice control', etc. are next to useless. In certain cases, I've tried to adapt. For example, my immediate family, rather than have their names or what I call them in my other native language, I've named them using common English words. So I can just say "Call Dad", and the speech recognition system works.
When I say that OEMs and auto-makers should work on improving voice recognition systems, I mean the entire processing system: sound acquisition, signal conditioning, and machine-learning based speech recognition.
That out of the way, my VW will duplicate much of what appears on the nav screen into a small display between the speedometer and tachometer. Having used a few heads up displays in cars I am not if I really want to go that route.
Still, when moving the car should be displaying relevant information only. I would much rather have a talking car than one trying to show me
This reduces distraction.
You have to remember to take into account human behavior. In the real world, people get into their vehicle and use their phone's map application, as well as text, phone, and music applications. Not only do they do this, they do it in overwhelming numbers.
This product takes common behavior that people engage in (and will continue to), and makes it safer and less confusing to engage in while driving.
Vehicles have knobs and touch-screens now. This tech doesn't change that dynamic, -it works with the UI elements already present in order to reduce fumbling around with your phone and tiny touch-targets on your mobile device.
>2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point.
That's besides the point. They aren't here yet, and they won't be in the immediate future. Making driving safer in the meantime isn't fluff.
> there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men.
What a terrible, low-value comment to make in this forum.