Friday, November 5, 2010

Technological Solution to Stupidity




I read an article yesterday about how best to deal with elderly people when they become too old to drive a car safely. The article itself wasn’t that big a deal, but the comments that people posted at the end of the article were. The commentary’s I read laid the blame of bad driving on everyone from teenagers to drunk drivers, as well as the elderly.

This got me to thinking. How many times in my entire life have I had a close call on the road because of an elderly person? I would say…maybe…5 times. What about drunk drivers? Maybe 5 times as well, but I don’t drive at a late hour very often. What about teenagers? I can’t really remember the last time I had a problem with driving as a result of the driver being a teen, but then again I don’t have kids.

So then I asked myself, how many times have I had a problem with somebody texting while driving? I immediately thought of like 10 instances from the last couple of days. So apparently, the highway safety people should forget everything else for now and fix this texting while driving thing before it gets way too far out of hand. And there have already been some efforts to do so. Unfortunately, PSA’s with dorky announcers don’t help, and police officers have no real way to enforce the laws that ban texting and driving.

Enter Arpeggio Andy, a man with an idea for a technological solution. I call it: The Automatic Off Button. It is a small transmitter hidden in all the electronics of a new car. This transmitter sends out a cell signal that is compatible with all cell phones, that has a broadcast radius big enough to encompass the interior of the car, and has the ability to turn off any cell phone internally. Thus, all cell phones will be rendered unusable inside the car while the engine is running. Hook, line, sinker…DONE!

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