Put Down Your Cell Phones!
10/8/2007
Text Messaging and Driving are not a Good Mix
I took an informal poll of my girlfriends the other day, and the results were not pretty. Out of five women, two admitted to text messaging while driving (though they say they only do so while stopped), one said she doesn’t text at all, and the other two said they didn’t text, but felt fine talking on the phone without a hands-free device while driving.
Arghhhh! The message is not getting through: Even for experienced drivers, cell phones are a dangerous distraction in the car. Even worse, we’re teaching our kids to behave exactly like us. Example matters, my friends.
A more official Harris Interactive poll recently indicated that 89 percent of adult drivers believe that texting while driving is dangerous, yet in that same poll 66 percent admitted to reading text messages while driving, and an even more shocking 57 percent said they send text messages while driving. The survey goes on to say that these numbers were the same for men and women. Holy distracted drivers, Batman!
If you just can’t live without texting during the time it takes to get from here to there, there are a couple of resources that can make it a little safer. Pinger.com is a free service that allows users to text via voice. You register a contact or two, then the service assigns a local number for you to call — using your hands-free device, of course — and prompts you by voice to leave an oh-so-last-century voice message. A text message is then sent to your recipient, who can then just click “send” to listen to your message. They can even reply via voice, though it strikes me as a little silly to “voice mail to text” back and forth, since you could just have a phone conversation instead. Maybe that’s just me.
Another site, Jott.com, lets you send a text or email message to your contact without typing it in yourself. Jott uses voice recognition to convert your message to text, so it’s not 100 percent accurate in its translation, but this service, too, is free. I might not use it for business, but I would definitely use it to text my husband and ask him to bring home a gallon of milk, or any of the other tasks I need him to do for me. I’d even use it to text myself reminders.
The best thing about these systems is that they let drivers keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Now texters everywhere can speak into their phones to let their peeps know they “wiL tlk 2 u l8r wen I m not drivin.”
Comments
Thanks for the mention, we are so happy to hear you are enjoying Jott! If you have any suggestions on ways Jott can better work for you, please send them our way at feedback@jott.com!
Posted by: Kate from Jott | Oct 12, 2007 5:48:55 PM
After the government made seatbelts into the law, how often do we see anyone not wearing one?
Just have to wait til they do the same to cell phones.
I mean, just how darn expensive is the handsfree? It is not completely safe, but it is better than having only one hand on the wheel!
Posted by: J | Oct 12, 2007 11:00:54 PM
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Amen sister! I am sure I am guilty of talking and driving and have been making an effort to stop. My husband emails & drives and I on constantly on his case. It's too dangerous people, we all need to stop!
Posted by: Courtney A. E. Messenbaugh | Oct 9, 2007 11:40:50 AM