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The Record, Hackensack, N.J., John Cichowski column: Road Warrior: Turning text messages to speech could save lives on North Jersey roads
Nov 20, 2009 (The Record - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
One of the things that makes America great is the Have Your Cake and Eat It Too Club, whose members include Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
Edison's "cake" was reading, a passion which he had trouble enjoying at night by candle, so he invented the light bulb, which helped him enjoy a good read when the sun went down. Ford's "cake" was cars, which were too expensive to be made for profit until he developed mass production, which helped him have cars and eat big profits, too.
Modern inductees include Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who now enjoy a pure cake diet after turning clunky computers and software into magic engines that run the world.
And today, Heath Ahrens is making his pitch in Washington, D.C., to be the newest member of the Have Your Cake and Eat It Too Club. The Morris County inventor believes he can turn a dangerous activity -- receiving text messages in the car -- into something no more hazardous than listening to the radio.
"Our application turns text messages and e-mails into voice messages that are heard on cellphones," Ahrens said, "so the driver doesn't touch the phone or become distracted by it."
This 25-word app can be installed free by downloading it at DriveSafe.ly A more sophisticated, 50-word model, with more bells and whistles for business use, costs $13.95 per phone. Neither allows texting while driving.
As Ahrens tells it, the system turns on when the driver enters the car and it allows the motorist to hear it, meaning he needn't look away from the road to get messages -- the hazard that causes accidents, kills and maims.
In other words, motorists can have their cake and eat it, too.
At least, that's what Ahrens and members of his Newark firm,
iSpeech, Inc., are telling the Federal Communications Commission at a staff workshop today in Washington. The FCC is exploring innovations and applications to eliminate or reduce driving distractions, as well as ways to educate the public about this behavior. Panelists include inventors, telecommunications leaders, safety groups, and insurance carriers.
Here's what one safety official thinks about such technology: "We'd prefer it if people stayed off the phone completely," said Pam Fischer, director of the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety. "Anytime a driver pays attention to something else, he's paying less attention to the road."
Fischer is technically right, of course. If she were a member of a federal panel investigating the impact of radios in cars after they were introduced in 1927, I'm sure she would have said the same thing.
Of course, there was no federal panel investigating car radios back then, and if there was, it wouldn't have had the benefit of 2009 hindsight.
But we do now, and no one is suggesting that Detroit or Japan rip radios out of dashboards.
Since then, however, lines have been drawn in the sand. Seven states ban texting. Nearly as many ban handheld cellphones. In Utah, you can go to jail for texting, and Congress is considering giving states incentives for stiffening penalties. Some New Jersey lawmakers seem willing to boost our low $100 fine.
"The goal should be social norming," said Fischer. "Getting people to accept the fact that these types of distractions are dangerous and should be punished appropriately."
Sounds good. But along comes a 28-year-old inventor who says what inventors have said for generations: Technology can allow us to have our cake and eat it, too -- as in safety AND service without controversial penalties.
If you disagree, which one of these three statements is false:
1) Cellphones and global positioning systems are here to stay because they're useful.
2) Banning hands-free cellphones is hugely unpopular.
3) Getting text messages in a car after they're converted to voice messages is no more dangerous than listening to a hands-free phone or playing a radio.
Most evidence suggests that none of these propositions is false. So, if they're all true, and technology holds a solution, does it make sense to control the technology rather than ban it? Might this minimally distracting app save more lives than it takes?
"So far, 1 million people are using our DriveSafe.ly app," said its inventor. "People really want it. Some say they wish it had been invented sooner because it would have saved many lives."
Will the FCC grant Heath Ahrens admission to the Have Your Cake and Eat It Too Club?
Road Warrior passes through here Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail cichowski@northjersey.com.
To see more of The Record or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.northjersey.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
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