Ars Technica:
Weeks ago, Apple was sued on accusations that its FaceTime app contributed to the highway death of a young girl in Texas. The girl’s family claims that the iPhone maker should have deployed technology to prohibit motorists from using the app.
Now there’s another lawsuit targeting Apple’s decision not to deploy a lock-out mechanism. This one—from an injured Southern California motorist—concerns locking out drivers from texting.
This lawsuit from accident victim Julio Ceja, who was rear-ended by a texting driver, does not seek any monetary damages. Instead, it demands that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge block Apple from selling iPhones in the Golden State until the devices are updated to include Apple’s patented technology to lock drivers out of their phones while driving.
I feel for the victims of these accidents but Apple can’t be held responsible for the actions of other drivers who ignore common sense and the law.
I love texting on my iPhone.
Using Siri.
With the iPhone nicely out of sight.
If she gets it wrong, so much the better for both me and the person receiving the message. It’s probably better than what I meant anyway.
Is there a way to edit a message? When you dictate a message, she reads it back before sending. If it’s wrong, how do you fix the message hands-free?
No way that I know of, I just say “No” to “send it” and do it over… I’d love to know if I am missing something though.
After Siri reads back your message, you can say “Change it” and redo your message. You can also say “add _____” and it will add whatever you say onto the end of the message.
Brilliant. Thanks for that. Very useful.
Any idiot who can’t use a handsfree deserves long jail time.
since Apple was abiding by the law…of course, the lawsuit itself is a joke.
To accept the reasoning of these suits, one would have to admit that warning people hasn’t been done, and that any reasonable person out there could possibly not be aware of the problem of texting while driving.
They are to blame themselves.
Yes it’s clearly the drivers fault.
But Apple does have the patent on being able to prevent this. So imo they have opened themselves up to this kind of action.
The one downside is after “add to it” (or add ____) I don’t know of a way to say “You got the addition wrong, let’s do just that again.”
I hope not. It will suck if the passengers in a car aren’t able to text, either. My passenger texting their passenger is great for coordination. 🙂
All Apple needs to do is implement what Waze does. If the app detects fast movement (via GPS – obviously in a car on the road and not walking down the street) it simply asks if this is the passenger or driver. If you click Passenger while driving then you obviously absolve the app in question.
If the Apple patent is unworkable because it is simply bypassed, how about a feature where I can block incoming calls or FaceTime invites from people driving.
I don’t want to be on the line while the other person who called me is driving unsafely and gets in an accident. Leave me out of it.
That “feature” already exists. I use it all the time. It’s called, “Sorry but please call me back when you’re not driving” and I hang up on them.
Hmm. Being in Minnesota I require a far more hard headed passive aggressive technique. ?
So, Apple has the responsibility to keep people from doing stupid things. Interesting. One has to wonder the class action lawsuit that would erupt from being forced to behave and how Apple must surely be doomed because it thought it knew better than the customers. Why is Apple constantly in a Kobayashi Maru?
All these ‘hands-free’ & ‘voice interface’ options also contribute to distracted driving and put people at risk. If Apple loses these lawsuits and must establish some setup discouraging people from endangering their own lives and the lives of others, that’s just the system working out its boundaries in terms of these new technologies.
You might be inconvenienced by a ‘lock-out’, oh well. I’m inconvenienced by the lack of a lockout. I actually want society to enforce some minimum of responsible behavior.
You can’t buy leaded gasoline on every pump & you can’t Message/Facetime while in a moving car? Fine by me.
Unless Siri replies with “Who would you like to Charge it to?” /s
Just checked and it appears Apple does have a patent. Doesn’t mean it can actually work. Apple is not a company that throws half-baked solutions into their phones. Look how long it too to implement copy/paste! I suspect if Apple actually implemented it, the first person to answer “passenger” on the test, but is actually driving, would sue Apple anyway.
I don’t think any of the virtual assistants are at that point yet?
On a tangent note, I find my attention drifting from driving just from dictating a message, much less dealing with verbally editing one. I think we’re going to need ubiquitous assisted/robot driving in order to allow us to even dictate messages while “driving.” (And even then I hope we get distracted driving tickets if we aren’t watching the robot drivers.)