The last thing you want to be texting before getting into a crash is “Omg!”
A blog we wrote two weeks ago highlighted the risk of traveling in unfamiliar places and asked our readers to give us tips that would help road warriors stay safe. This week we’re focusing on another road hazard – texting while driving.
Your traveling sales force is out there on the road, sometimes using their cars and cell phones as their portable offices and computers. They may have to quickly confirm an appointment, or send a price quote, or take a conference call while on the road. Or worse, they may encounter a careless teen that just has to ‘roflmao’(for you novice texters, that translates to rolling on floor laughing my a** off) in response to a friend’s text while driving.
With modern day gizmos and smart phones so easily available in the market today, texting and emailing is as natural as breathing to us. So much so that we want to do it while driving too! But do we need more distractions while driving? To make matters worse, most modern day cars are equipped with interactive dashboard features that enable (and possibly tempt us) to keep working while we’re on the road. These are all meant to be safety features, no doubt. But it’s a double-edged sword. These features combined with our smart phones only tempt us to get more done while on the road. Everyone is in a time crunch these days, and it’s a temptation to use our drive time to multi-task (especially when you’re sitting in traffic).
Bluff Manufacturing’s Crash Guard can protect your personnel, inventory and building from damage due to crashes. But since we don’t have a product to keep the road warriors, or regular motorists safe while driving, we thought we’d pass along information about a wonderful new app currently available for your smart phones such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.
The DriveSafe.lyTM application is “The App to Stop Distracted Driving” in it’s own words. It’s website claims to have prevented 307,791,892 texting-while-driving incidents. This app basically reads out text messages and emails aloud in real time without the driver ever having to touch the phone. It even allows the driver to respond to the messages and emails by dictating messages and reviewing them before sending them out – all completely hands-free. The voice commands include ‘call-back,’ ‘repeat message,’ and ‘cancel.’ The best part of this application is that you can turn it on and turn it off as and when you need it to work for you.
Bottom-line, if you must multi-task while driving, then do it as safely as possible. Don’t forget to turn it on when you’re driving and don’t forget to turn it off when you’re not. Your wife’s text message reminding you to ‘talk to the doctor about that problem you’ve been having’ is not something you want read aloud at your company’s quarterly review!
For those with restless finger syndrome, this app may be a good solution that mitigates risk and causes less disruption while you drive. Be safe on the road! Ttyl (talk to you later)!
