You Will No Longer Be Able To Text While Driving If Groove Has Its Way

You Will No Longer Be Able To Text While Driving If Groove Has Its Way

Stats from the U.S. Department of Transportation shows that up to 1.6 million car accidents, involve the use of cell phones, and has led to more than half a million injuries and 6,000 deaths. The stats also show that accidents are resulting from texting while driving have surpassed accidents from drinking when it comes to car accidents involving teenagers. A personal injury attorney in Philadelphia notes that there is an 11 mile stretch of road that ranks as the most dangerous in all of Pennsylvania and has been the location for 30 deaths over the span of 2 years. No one can afford to be distracted when there are such perilous roads all over the country.

There are already numerous attempts in action trying to mitigate this dangerous behavior of texting while driving. One of which is the use of apps installed in smartphones that tap into the phone’s GPS signal. Then the app can detects when the phone’s user is travelling at more than 10 miles per hour and automatically disable all the phone’s features deem distracting.

Such app have failed to make any significant impact, since users can easily disable them and sometimes they can be quite inconveniencing due to their inability to differentiate when the user is driving or is a passenger in car, public bus, bike or any other modes of transport going at speed above 10 miles per hour.

This is about to change thanks to one chemical engineer and space entrepreneur, Scott Tibbits. Who as a result of a loss of a close friend to road accident caused by texting while driving has invented the Groove. This is a small device that can be plugged into a port found under the car’s steering wheel (for most vehicles manufactured after 1996) and has the capability of connecting the car to the internet. The driver then needs to register with Groove.

Whenever the driver turns on the ignition, Groove will identify who the driver is and notify the phone carrier to turn off all the distractions such as text messaging services. When the driver turns the car off, Groove will again notify the carrier and all the previously blocked messages will start rolling in.

There is no doubt that Groove is by all standards an innovative feature all cars should have. However, it faces one limitation; it requires mobile carriers to come on board for it to work. The manufacturer, Katasi is currently working with two of U.S. mobile carriers and intends to launch come 2015.

According to Tibbits, this is hardly enough since, “Our goal is to have every carrier on board with Groove, providing the capability to limit distractions before they get to the phone when a subscriber is driving.”

If you would like more information about Groove and find out if it is available to you, check out the Katasi’s website at this link.