Distracted driving contest reveals the obvious: texting while driving is dangerous
By Will Park on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 1:09 pm PST In Announcements, Applications, Services, Technologies
Who woulda thunk it? Apparently, there’s some rhyme to the reason behind the recent outlawing of typing SMS text messages while driving. Nuance, makers of speech recognition technology for mobile phones held a contest in Florida to see just how dangerous a distracted, SMS texting driver was, compared to a driver using Nuance’s speech recognition technology.
Turns out, drivers tasked with sending a short SMS text message, looking up a local business, and playing an MP3 file - tasks typically associated with “driving while mobile” - repeatedly crashed. Those drivers using Nuance software-equipped mobile phones were able to carry out the tasks with nary a crash.
As obvious as the results might seem, props to Nuance for leveraging the recent bad press over mobile-distracted drivers to push their speech recognition tech - they’re not the only game in the speech recognition-town, but they’re good at getting their stuff out in the ether. Hit the vid below to see just how badly these people drive.
October 26th, 2007 at 3:45 am
I think Nuance are doing a great job of alerting young drives - who are most prone to texting etc and most prone to having accidents.
However, from a scientific viewpoint I wonder if girls would have faired better than the boys at multitasking!
October 26th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Interesting point. I’d also like to see this test run on a closed course with real cars - maybe a large parking lot with cones in place of obstacles.