Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: confusious says on 16/05/2013 11:29:16
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Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to this site, but I have a project for a budding inventor, I give this idea free, in the hope someone will take this project on and save a lot of lives on our roads.
Can we design all mobile phones that has inside them a multi-axis mecury switch that cuts off power whilst the phone is in motion, i.e. the phone is in a vehicle and moving?, it could automatically block all calls and sms messages, both in and out, but you could incorporate an overide switch after the phone flags up a message ''Phone in transit, if you are a passenger, press overide button'' which would bridge the mercury circuit and allow the phone to be used normally. Mercury switches have been used on planes for a number of years, though mecury is expensive, I believe we should look at this as a real life saver.
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As I use my mobile whilst walking and running - and most of the time do not get the phone from my backpack or pocket then this would be a real pain in the neck. You could use the on board gps that many smart phones have to ensure it is only at high speed - but this would screw up train passengers still.
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As I've said, you can overide motion, you can do this before you start jogging. Not all phones have GPS.
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The sort of fool who uses a mobile phone while driving would probably just push the passenger override button anyway.
Re"Mercury switches have been used on planes "
Are you sure about that?
They usually take quite a bit of care to keep mercury out of planes.
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but this would screw up train passengers still.
That may, in fact, not be a bad thing. [???]
Remember, you're designing a new phone from scratch. With that in mind, you can insist that it has features like a GPS be included or enabled.
But, I think imatfaal's point is that even in a car, the passenger may be legally using the phone while the driver is concentrating on driving.
I'm not sure a mercury switch would work to determine velocity anyway. Certainly one also gets a twisting movement just from carrying the phone, and perhaps rapid movements when moving it in one's hand. Anyway, your mercury switches often detect acceleration rather than velocity.
One could design a complex ignition lockout system to prevent the driver from using a phone (can easy enough determine where in a car the phone is located), or a system to determine if a passenger is in fact in the passenger seat. However, while the government may be excited about such devices, it may be difficult to convince the public to make the purchase.
If one uses prudence with a phone, then I'm not sure it is a problem to use in vehicles. Hands Free is a nice feature, and phones that tie in to the car stereo system. Or, of course, the bluetooth ear bugs. There has been talk about voice recognition in phones for at least a decade, but I don't think many people use it.
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Most smartphones have an accelerometer that can do this, but it will be unreliable- think of the famous iPhone "you are holding it wrong" issue, as the phone cannot tell which way is up or if you are in a car accelerating or merely holding it at an angle to the chin while talking. More would be driver education, or enforcement of the law, but that is not likely.
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It is safer to use a mobile phone in hands-free mode while driving - but the mental effort of trying to hear, understand and respond to someone is still a significant distraction from the road.
Many people consider that answering the phone or reading/writing a text message is more important than driving.
In this scenario, we actually need cars that can drive themselves, so we can concentrate on the really important things - like communicating.
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but the mental effort of trying to hear, understand and respond to someone is still a significant distraction from the road.
Should we also prohibit passengers from talking?
Especially those pesky little "half passengers".
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Should we also prohibit passengers from talking?
Especially those pesky little "half passengers".
As I understand it, talking to physically present passengers is a distraction, but for whatever reason, talking to someone that is not physically present is a significantly greater distraction (or takes more cognitive effort).
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What's really needed is a phone that gives the person at the other end a good view of the road ahead so that they can behave like a passenger and shut up when they can see that the driver needs to concentrate more on the road.
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What's really needed is a phone that gives the person at the other end a good view of the road ahead so that they can behave like a passenger and shut up when they can see that the driver needs to concentrate more on the road.
Or to scream at the driver when they do something stupid.
Is there any data to support a conversation in person being less taxing than a conversation over the phone? Certainly one would look at the person less when talking on the phone (although dialing, muting, and etc can be a problem).
I wonder if the conversations are different.
Person to person conversations in a car may require less analysis on the subject matter. Then, of course, one may be more likely to say "shut up for a few minutes", even to kids. One may be less likely to say shut-up on the phone, although I've told people to hold on while I was manuvering through an intersection or in a parking lot.
A portion of the cell phone calls may also be just chatting. However, another portion might be asking specific questions to which a specific answer is required, and perhaps some analysis. For example debugging someone's computer woes over the phone, or making important business decisions.
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It may be that most passenger talk is chat, smalltalk, where you don't have to concentrate too hard and can just 'uh-huh' and 'mmm' when traffic gets awkward. Phone calls tend to be more questions and exchange of 'important' information, which requires more attention, and the person on the other end doesn't know you're trying to overtake a 24-wheeler on a blind bend...
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Is there any data to support a conversation in person being less taxing than a conversation over the phone?
It's my understanding that the experimental evidence is that the accident rate is different between people talking within the car and over a phone; and this is independent of whether you're talking hands-free or not.
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Being a geek, and prone to have deep conversations, I can attest that having a cognitively-demanding conversation with a passenger in a car is also detrimental to my driving. I rarely have passengers, and having experienced the effect I will try to avoid such conversations in future too.
(With regard to driving while talking on the phone -which I absolutely do not do- ... Besides the fact that the other party on a phone can't see you and is therefore "unsympathetic" to the conditions, I suspect that struggling to hear them over the background noise and over a poor quality phone link also takes more brain-power away from the driving.)
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Actually it is not the mobile phone that creates a problem on driving , it is the shift of attention from driving to the phone call that causes problem . One clud make a autoanswer mobile phone that automatically answers the call while the owner is driving .
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"How to make a safe mobile phone for people driving?"
Switch it off.
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We receive a huge amount of information through our eyes, but very little of it is significant. The auditory bandwidth is much narrower (kilohertz rather than gigahertz) but the information is much more significant. The test of these statements is in our response to intentional light and sound signals: it can take most of a second to respond to a red light, but less than a tenth of a second to hit the brake if someone shouts "stop!". Further evidence comes from skilled Morse code readers: the best naval readers can manage no more than 14 words per minute of light signals, but many radio hams work at 60 wpm and above.
Driving safely is almost entirely a visual task, and the intrusion of a voice from anywhere is distracting because the audio input overrides the visual. Not a problem with a passenger, who will be speaking informally and sharing the driver's awareness of visible threats, but phone conversations tend to be formal, informationally dense, and effectively onesided because the other bloke is sitting in an office with no distractions. It takes a lot of experience to talk safely even with a good handsfree, and a fair bit of social courage to delay your response or even ignore the input when things get hairy on the road.
Early on in pilot training you are taught "aviate, navigate, communicate, always in that order" and even though your communication is only with trained controllers and other pilots, a well-executed instrument manouever can suddenly go to pieces if the incoming voice says something unexpected. On the upside, nobody gets upset however many times you say "say again". I guess the answer to safe phone use on the road is to practice "stand by" and "say again" until they become second nature and put you in control of the conversation.
Alfa Charlie out.