Described by the US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood as a plague that eats away at the American society, distracted driving is now getting ready to meet its newest and possibly deadliest enemy: cell phone blocking solutions.
On Tuesday, Marsh 22, we presented only one of these solutions, developed by Cellcontrol. More companies, however, are working on similar technologies which, in essence, are designed to do one thing and one thing only: physically prevent the driver of a car from using his or her phone.
Sprint Nextel announced today that it too would join the fight against distracted driving with the launch of the Drive First solution. Just as Cellcontrol's version, Drive First is meant as a tool. It will be used, starting the third quarter of 2011, only on Android mobile phones and will have the following characteristics:
- lock the driver’s cell phone screen and redirect calls to voice mail
- block text-message alerts and auto-respond to the message sender that the driver is currently unavailable
- allow access to three key contacts and three mobile applications, such as GPS navigation
- give parents and business administrators Web portal access to configure Drive First for their teens’ or employees’ mobile devices.
The service will be offered by Sprint in the form of a service, for which future subscribers will have to pay a $2-per-month charge (excluding surcharges and taxes) for each of the devices which will use it.
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