Protect Yourself: Phone Settings Can Save Lives

It was the beginning of the quarantine. I hadn’t seen any of my friends for a month, and it was starting to wear on me. The only way I could still connect with them was through text messaging, so I made sure to answer every text and keep every conversation going. One night, my family decided to order pizza for dinner. As a recent recipient of a driver’s license, I jumped at the chance to drive to the pizza place to pick it up. On the way down the street I live on, I heard my phone buzz and light up with a text message. I knew I shouldn’t have taken my attention away from the road, but I picked up my phone anyway, navigating out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t anything important — and that turned out to be a good thing. As I put my phone down and turned back to the road, I realized I was much farther up than I thought, already at the point where the road curved. I was heading right towards my neighbor’s parked car. Fortunately, there was nobody else on the small suburban road, so I could safely slam on the brakes and avoid any damage, but it made me realize how easy it is to become distracted while driving.

While this incident sounds bad, it could have been much worse. Had I been taught strategies for not losing focus while driving, perhaps it could have been fully averted. After I got my learner’s permit but before I got my license, I was very bad at observing the road while I drove. I didn’t know what to look for in the mirrors, and common rules such as what to do at a four-way stop sign were unknown to me. Then I found a drivers’ ed course near me. It was only a few hours of practical advice while on the road, but it helped me greatly. I learned what to do at intersections, I re-learned traffic laws, and crucially, I learned what to pay the most attention to while driving. I took a refresher right before I attempted the driver’s license test, and I can confidently say that the drivers’ ed course is the reason I passed. Drivers’ ed helped me, and helps everyone who takes it, become more aware of what’s going on and predict what problems could arise, so we can avoid crashes before they occur. Thanks to this, the incident above was the only one of its kind that I’ve had, a full year after I’ve gotten my license.

Although my driver’s ed course was extremely useful, it lacked any mention of phone safety while driving. I would have liked if it had discussed this more, because phone usage is a very relevant issue to people my age. In a world where any information is at our fingertips almost any time of day, it’s very hard to take a complete break from all of that. But that’s what we have to do every time we’re behind the wheel. When there’s nobody else in the car, driving can feel isolating. Teenagers start to reach for our phones to escape the oppressive silence, and that’s when the danger of accidents arises. Fortunately, while looking through my phone’s settings one day, I found a feature that could be a great way for people to avoid the boredom of driving without taking their attention off the road: voice commands.

It’s no surprise that the car radio is ubiquitous while the car television is nearly unheard-of: looking away from the road is much more dangerous than listening to something. When I enabled voice commands on my phone, I found I could do much of what I wanted to do without ever taking my eyes off the road. For example, to skip a song I didn’t like, I didn’t have to pick up my phone and press the fast-forward button; all I had to do was say “hey Siri, skip this song.” It could read out and send texts, too, although I’d already decided to put my phone on silent mode while driving to prevent a repeat of the aforementioned situation. It’s been months since I turned those two settings on, and I haven’t ever been distracted by my phone since. Because these features are pretty obscure, buried several layers deep within the phone’s settings, most teenagers I know don’t use them at all. I think a great first step to prevent texting and driving would be to make more people aware of what their phones can do to help them stay focused without totally cutting themselves off from the world.

However, voice commands are somewhat limited in iPhones and some Android phones. They can’t control social media apps, which is a problem because teenagers communicate through those apps almost exclusively. Anyone looking to reduce the number of teens texting while driving would find a lot of success in working with social media companies to have them implement voice command support for texting. For example, Instagram, by far the most popular social media app among teenagers, doesn’t let a phone read its messages out loud. It would be quite easy, from what I understand of app development, for Instagram’s developers to add this feature, which could potentially save lives. Additionally, I believe drivers’ ed courses should focus on things teenagers can do to prevent them from looking at their phones while driving: the Do Not Disturb While Driving setting present in iPhones, for example, or the aforementioned voice commands. Keeping drivers focused on the road is as important as making sure they wear seatbelts or drive sober — if app developers could be persuaded to add simple voice command support, it would be enormously helpful.

In a perfect world, people would just be able to put their lives on hold while driving, but we can’t expect everyone to do that — and teens, often in the middle of social drama, are most likely to want to use social media while driving. Because of this, the best way to reduce their risk of developing dangerous driving habits is to help them set up ways to stay focused. Since smartphones, the connection to the driver’s social life, are what’s causing the problem, they’re the best place to put in a solution. By allowing the driver to stay focused on the road without sacrificing their connection to the outside world, voice commands can help reduce the occurrence of dangerous driving habits among teenagers and save lives.