New device being developed to find people who use mobile while driving
It has happened to all of us, many times, while driving on Qatar’s roads. While peacefully driving down the road, a car swerves in your direction, scaring the living daylights out of you.
Heart in mouth, you glance at the unruly driver and see him/her busy texting on the phone. And all you can do is shake your head and move on.
But if recent developments are any indication, such errant drivers who use smartphones while driving could soon be brought to the book.
A new device, named ‘Textalyser,’ is being developed to check mobile phone usage while driving and it should be in the market soon, the expert revealed.
The gadget can help the police if an accident takes place. The device can scan the involved motorists’ mobile phones and find out whether the driver was using the phone at the time of the accident. This can be used just like the breath analyser.
“The ‘Textalyser,’ will help the authorities to know whether mobile phone was the villain in an accident, especially in a scenario in which citing privacy reasons, police may not open the phone to check the call list or data usage.
“Most of the phones are password protected and cannot be accessed freely. But the new device can help the police in this regard without breaching the privacy of the person and provide data about the phone usage,” a traffic safety expert told Gulf Times.
The use of the phones when driving has been attributed to a significant number of accidents, and the increasing trend of accessing the Internet, is all the more threatening. The practise is becoming quite common among both the genders, it could be seen.
“Many motorists are addicted to the use of mobile phones and hence do not care about the rules, putting their own lives and the lives of others in danger,” the expert said.
Citing his experience, a regular commuter on Doha roads observed that if a vehicle is being driven either recklessly or on the contrary unusually slow, in most cases the person at the wheel would be busy on smartphone.
“If I see such behaviour from a car in front, I immediately shift tracks to avoid trouble,” he added.
Courtesy: gulf-times.com
The technology to bypass textalyser will be in the market soon..
catch them catch them all...hang them out to dry...the single most selfish and dangerous demographic on the roads in any country...as WT says, stop the god damned car for a minute, take your call and then drive on....brit, the handsfree idea has been shown in multiple research studies to have little to no effect in helping a drivers' focus on the road; it doesn't address the issue of the eyes picking up visual information but the brain not registering it at all...
The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year.
Nearly 330,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving.
1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving.
Texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. These are the latest statistics from the USA. In Qatar the ratios are probably four times higher.
However, I am afraid nothing will be done about it.
You either drive or you talk on the phone, brit. What's the problem? I would be furious if my woman would talk on the phone while we are ....... And if people drive when they're driving and not do anything else it could also reduce accidents dramatically.
WT: What if hands free unit was installed in the car
It's "ECM", not "EMC".
Cell phones work by sending signals to (and receiving them from) nearby cell towers (base stations) using RF waves. This is a form of electromagnetic energy that falls between FM radio waves and microwaves. It would be easy to install a small sensor in a car which picks up the radiation and sends the information to the EMC which would then shut down the engine.
Shafqat, The culprits { drivers } are risky in their normal life as well. It will be very tough to catch them because the offenders hide in side their cars ..........
Indeed its an achievement - but still there is a lot to do on this.
The person who is an offender in more ways than one will find another way. ..........
Most dangerous are those who just crawl in the fast lane ..........
Waiting for it eagerly
Police can already do this to an extent by contacting the service provider. he can tell them whether a phone was in use at any particulr time and also the location