Oprah Winfrey is trying to get you to stop using your phone while driving and the media mogul dedicated her show to making the car a “no phone zone.”
She urged people to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t call or text while behind the wheel and her push coincided with multiple rallies around the country. If you’re so inclined, you can sign the pledge on her website.
“It’s like Russian roulette every time you pick up your phone in the car,” Oprah told her audience.
Oprah has surprisingly been in the mobile news a lot recently, as she just launched apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and webOS. The paid(!) app offers fans access to clips from upcoming shows, polls, audio clips and articles from The Oprah Magazine.
This is a really tough issue. Oprah is right because there’s no doubt in my mind that using a phone while driving, in any manner, is a distraction. But the benefits of being able to communicate while commuting are also obvious. So, what’s the solution? We’re finally seeing some bad-ass car tech that integrates your phone well. Microsoft’s Sync will read you text messages and provide hands-free options and Nokia and Research In Motion have made moves to be more car-friendly.
At RIM’s WES conference this week, we got a good look at the BMW ConnectedDrive system and it integrates your BlackBerry e-mails and texts right into the dashboard display. It’s pretty cool stuff, as the car will notify you when you have a message waiting and it will read your e-mails to you. You can also manually read your messages, but only when the car is stopped. The voice-to-text worked pretty well when we tried it out, too. Check out the embedded video below for a closer look at what you can expect from the ConnectedDrive system.
[Via Associated Press, photo]
