[HN Gopher] Show HN: A machine that detects when you text and dr...
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Show HN: A machine that detects when you text and drive then shocks
you [video]
Author : nik12795
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-06-26 12:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| Thought this was gonna be Michael Reeves
| rzzzt wrote:
| His solution would just zap at random moments.
| janci wrote:
| Exactly!
| Tade0 wrote:
| There's a brilliant solution to this problem implemented in some
| locomotives: have a button which you need to press every now an
| then, otherwise an alarm is raised.
|
| Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard
| to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway.
|
| Most people are right handed, so putting it on the right hand
| side would naturally prevent anyone from holding a phone for too
| long.
|
| Unless of course they are like this acquaintance of mine who
| would steer with his knees. Ironically he's the one who told me
| about that device.
| darkfirefly wrote:
| Unfortunately, trains are a different scenario than cars,
| mainly due to the fact that they are on rails and are generally
| kept well apart through rail signals.
|
| A couple seconds where a train driver is distracted != a couple
| of seconds where a car driver is distracted. A button is not
| fast enough (you would need to press it >once per second, which
| is not particularly comfortable)
|
| This is why it is "necessary" to have more "advanced" ways of
| detecting driver inattentiveness.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's
| hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a
| highway."
|
| Well... it's more difficult, but not that difficult. Use the
| top two finger to hold the phone, bottom two on the shifter,
| and thumb for the screen.
| Tade0 wrote:
| You're a more skilled driver than me.
|
| Ooor it's just my old 00' Corolla, which never switched
| properly. I bought my first smartphone in 2014 and stopped
| driving manual in 2015, so any overlap which could allow for
| such tricks was fairly short.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I don't think of myself as someone who ever texted and drove, but
| I know for sure that having Apple CarPlay has dropped my time
| holding my phone to 0.0% of the time while driving. If I can read
| and write texts over voice, receive and initiate phone calls
| hands-free -- I'm a safe driver.
| King-Aaron wrote:
| On the whole I feel modern cars with all the modern comforts and
| conveniences are ultimately the cause of accidents. People feel
| too complacent in operating what's effectively a two-ton missile.
| (Or as Daria's dad once put it, "you're just a radio with
| doors!")
|
| In my little race car, I have no radio, no air conditioner, no
| carpets, roll bars, bucket seats and harnesses. You're well aware
| you're operating machinery, and like driving a telihandler or
| some other machine, you don't let yourself get distracted. Phone
| goes in the pocket and you're absorbed with the machine you're
| operating.
|
| Yet in my daily driver I often find myself fiddling with spotify,
| or running through contact lists for phone calls via the head
| unit, playing with hvac settings, etc.
|
| While I don't know if consumers would accept the removal of
| comforts for safety sake, I feel that I'm a safer driver in my
| bare-bones vehicle with less overall distractions and
| conveniences. Ultimately like with everything, I guess it comes
| down to more education being required.
| nik12795 wrote:
| That's a good point. And I do agree with you that, although it
| may be safer with less distractions, the average consumer would
| not be willing to give up those comforts. How do you feel about
| self driving cars?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| If it's 40c outside, heatstroke might be a bit distracting, so
| I'll keep my air conditioner thanks
| Rumudiez wrote:
| It was 46C here yesterday and I took my car without A/C out
| for an errand. The day before I enjoyed a motorcycle ride in
| similar weather. It can be done, but I don't think the hvac
| is nearly as distracting as fiddling with a phone or even the
| radio since it's more of a set-and-forget control.
| carlmr wrote:
| Exactly, when my AC broke on my last car I found the heat
| quite distracting.
| mulmen wrote:
| While I share your perception the numbers are clear. Traffic
| fatalities continue to decline as cars get safer. Correlation
| does not imply causation of course but I find it hard to
| believe these trends are in spite of modern safety features.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...
| glandium wrote:
| Something I've often wondered but don't think I've seen
| studies of is whether those decreases in fatalities are
| "compensated" by an increase of injuries. IoW, there could
| very much be more accidents and at the same time less of them
| fatal.
| onion2k wrote:
| The number of fatalities is a function of how safe the car is
| in an accident as well as how many accidents there are. If
| cars could be made perfectly safe the number of fatalities
| would be zero. That wouldn't mean distracted people wouldn't
| crash any more.
|
| The number to look at is total accidents per mile rather than
| just fatal ones. Unfortunately that still won't really give
| you an accurate picture because there are far more variables
| than just the driver's level of attention.
| badRNG wrote:
| Well, I have to imagine features like auto emergency
| braking, lane departure warning, blind spot detection, and
| many more have saved countless lives AND prevented many
| accidents. I know they've saved me personally from an
| accident.
| clairity wrote:
| no, those things simply lower the skill floor of driving
| as well as reduces attention/focus, which is the opposite
| of safety. all things being equal, less attention causes
| accidents and makes them more severe, and greater skill
| prevents accidents and lessens severity. some of those
| "safety" features can cause accidents because they
| counteract rather than complement the measures of a
| skilled driver.
| mulmen wrote:
| Safety features reduce cognitive load and allow
| reallocation of limited attention span.
|
| Take the example of (airline) autopilots. Or in the case
| of a car lane keeping and radar cruise control. The
| driver can reallocate the cognitive energy used for
| precise steering input and throttle control to
| situational awareness, further improving safety.
|
| These features improve safety, even (especially!) in the
| hands of competent drivers.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Safety features reduce cognitive load and allow
| reallocation of limited attention span."
|
| no, attention does not magically get more focused on
| driving by reducing already low cognitive load. most
| driving is already routinized, falsely lulling us into an
| illusory sense of security. humans do not magically get
| more attentive under routine when invited to be even more
| comfortable. autopilot is a great example: pilots eat,
| sleep, drink, read, and chat more, rather than paying
| more attention to the environment, controls, dials and
| gauges. this is also why traffic calming techniques that
| reduce overall danger are about making the ever-present
| risks more apparent (adding roadside trees, narrowing
| lanes), rather than the opposite.
|
| those so-called "safety" features optimize for the 99% of
| the time that situations are routine and fine, rather
| than the 1% of time that they're potentially deadly,
| because they reduce skill and experience useful in those
| 1% situations. pilots talk about the same general lack of
| emergency preparedness induced by autopilot dependence.
| ectopod wrote:
| However safe the interior of the car is made, the number of
| fatalities will not be zero. Not everyone is in a car. As
| your parent comment's link notes, the number of pedestrian
| fatalities has increased since 2010.
| b3morales wrote:
| Notice, however, that _pedestrian_ fatalities (further down
| on the same page) have soared. They do not share in the
| safety features that benefit the motorists who kill them.
| mulmen wrote:
| What about safety features like automatic braking?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Good for you !
|
| Now, a lot of people would be sleeping at the wheel with no
| radio.
|
| No AC during winter would mean driving with heavy coats on, so
| I'm not sure it would be safer. During summer it means no
| driving at all (which could be great in itself, but it's a
| harder sale than you make it look)
|
| My point is, someone's distraction is likely someone else's
| saving feature.
| bshimmin wrote:
| If the only thing keeping you awake at the wheel is having
| the radio on, rather than driving you should be having a
| break (for some people, a coffee and a micro-nap will work
| wonders).
| nicoburns wrote:
| Agreed, if it's the only thing keeping you awake, but
| plenty of people find it easier to concentrate on a task if
| there is also a "distraction". It's like when school
| children fiddle with a pen to help them concentrate. The
| teacher might think it's a sign that they're not paying
| attention, but actually it's enabling them to pay
| attention.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I see it as a scale, where having the radio on or not could
| push a few point more regarding engagement in the task.
|
| The same way someone shouldn't be driving if they're dead
| tired, but even if they're in an alert state, drinking a
| cup of coffee can sharpen them a bit more.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| This seems to me no more than a bunch of justifications. I
| live in a region with -40degC winters and +40degC summers
| (that's the extremes, but we see them every year, and the
| averages are not far off). Most people drive without air
| conditioning in summer and with just enough heating in winter
| to make the air tolerable in several layers of heavy
| clothing. It's fine.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| We all have our anecdotes, so to try get a bit of distance
| on how well people deal with heat:
|
| > Results show a significant positive association between
| fatal traffic crashes and heat waves with a 3.4% (95% CI:
| 0.9, 5.9%) increase in fatal traffic crashes on heat wave
| days versus non-heat wave days.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001
| 4...
|
| Doesn't look fine to me.
| slingnow wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of people are fiddling with their AC
| settings and causing accidents.
| daenz wrote:
| Because driving while texting wasn't dangerous enough, here's
| another device that will definitely compromise your focus and
| force you to have an involuntary physical reaction!
|
| It's a cool experiment, but thinking that people should be
| "shocked" (physically or otherwise) as a remedy to texting while
| they're driving is not the right approach. It's just going to
| cause more accidents.
| nik12795 wrote:
| Did you watch the video and did you get the sense that this was
| actually something I thought should be brought to market? It
| was a fun experiment :)
|
| I totally agree it is not the right approach and, if you watch
| the end of the video, I say "Is this the texting and driving
| solution that humanity needs? No, of course not. It makes
| texting and driving way more distracting and dangerous."
| 1cvmask wrote:
| They were just having fun and not advocating it at all.
| inetsee wrote:
| Some random thoughts.
|
| @daenz: My first thought also was that this was a very dangerous
| idea.
|
| My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that
| would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the
| GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a
| certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that
| you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car
| or bus.
|
| My third thought: I'm too lazy right now to check, but are there
| apps that let you send a text by speaking the message you want to
| send?
| xur17 wrote:
| > My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that
| would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the
| GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a
| certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is
| that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in
| a car or bus.
|
| There are apps that do exactly this.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Siri does that on iPhones, but you still have to check the text
| and correct mistakes which might be more demanding of a task
| than simply typing it.
| nik12795 wrote:
| For those commenting that this is more dangerous than just
| texting and driving, I think you're missing the point of this fun
| and entertaining experiment. I urge you to watch the video since
| I point out that it's not safer than texting and driving.
|
| I also point out that there are other ways to incentivize the
| driver to not text and drive, like having the driver pay a fee
| when they text and drive.
|
| I appreciate the discussion but a lot of these comments are
| bringing up points that are clearly addressed in the video.
| Please don't just read the headline and comment; watch the video
| and then lets all have an informed discussion :)
| jart wrote:
| Ten years ago two guys built an app for recognizing movements
| and sold it to Google for a lot of money.
| https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-goog...
| If you programmed a neural network attached to a camera that
| can see the driver's hand and eye movement to identify
| dangerous dark patterns in their driving behavior in real time,
| then corps like Uber and Amazon might want that information to
| save lives, but no shock collar.
| nik12795 wrote:
| I can see how that would be an attractive acquisition!
| Although having a camera installed to watch the driver might
| be a bit of a pain.
| AzN1337c0d3r wrote:
| > the driver pay a fee when they text and drive.
|
| Rich people will just pay this fee and keep texting.
|
| Anecdotally, I noticed that all my friends who can't stay off
| the phone when they are driving are all heavy social media
| users, so I think the social shaming method will work well: The
| car takes a picture of them texting and driving and posts it to
| all their social media accounts.
| nik12795 wrote:
| Yeah that's a good point. I also mentioned having a social
| shaming method where, every time you text and drive, it
| automatically posts "I'm currently texting and driving" on
| social media.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| The people who text & drive wouldn't voluntarily use any solution
| to prevent them from doing exactly that.
|
| The solution would be some feature in cars which are either
| mandatory, or would give you enough benefits to be worth
| considering even if you are an inconsiderate person who texts &
| drives.
|
| And the punishment / reward could come after the ride: - you
| texted? Well it's your third time this month, from now on you'll
| get a ticket each time you do it. - you installed the feature, so
| you get a bonus check from your insurance company every month.
|
| The tech exists already: - a new mercedes have precise realtime
| eye tracking that makes the hud projected on the windshield look
| to be exactly in the same place no matter how you move your head
| around. - there are devices which track your driving habits (are
| you speeding, driving erratically, etc..), this helps you when
| you have to deal with an insurance case.
| charlieo88 wrote:
| The plot of Quitter's Inc in Stephen King's Cats Eye, they
| shocked the protagonist's wife when there was a slip.
| foxpurple wrote:
| The solution is cameras on the streets paired with phone usage
| detection then if you get caught, your license is instantly
| terminated and you have to reapply for it.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| You cannot be that harsh.
|
| Losing your licence for DUI is reasonable, as you have to
| take several willful steps to get into that situation.
|
| Picking up your phone for whatever reason is instinctual.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Just put your phone in the glove compartment when you get into
| the car. Then you can't play with it while driving. I don't
| understand what is so important that you can't wait until you get
| to your destination to text or browse Instagram. This is
| compulsive behavior that people probably ought to seek help for.
| robmccoll wrote:
| Cool project! Also, I assume, nice job going to school on Mark
| Rober videos. The presentation style, editing, and overall polish
| is there and that's a good thing.
| nik12795 wrote:
| Thank you!!
| forgingahead wrote:
| Can we make this for cyclists who are weaving in and out of
| traffic & pedestrians? Basically detect dangerous city cycling
| and shock them as well?
| maneesh wrote:
| Pavlok founder here (wearable behavior trainer for humans with
| vibrate and electric zap)
|
| I have considered designing something to prevent texting while
| driving. But a zap during a drive seems like less safe and
| problematic. We see a lot of people who fall asleep while driving
| too.
|
| A curious problem to try and solve...
| nik12795 wrote:
| Yes, I'm familiar with Pavlok. I remember watching that episode
| on Shark Tank a few years ago.
|
| I come to the same "less safe and problematic" conclusion at
| the end of the video (which was no surprise). It's a real
| problem and something worth thinking about, at least until self
| driving cars take over.
| nefitty wrote:
| I've hooked up my pavlok to a bunch of stuff using iOS
| shortcuts. I'm sure it would be possible to automate this
| already.
| ggm wrote:
| There's pushback on touch screens in Car UI. Some people have
| said (I am paraphrasing) the screen is innately more confusing
| than dedicated functional mechanical knobs and switches.
|
| texting demands a huge amount of brain power. It's anything but a
| casual act. If it was a Cherry-Red alpha keyboard on the wheel,
| we might have a counter argument but really? it is still super
| demanding. It does not relate in anyway to speed, or gear, or
| revs, or situational awareness.
|
| Nor (I might add) does a lot of stuff on the Tesla screen. It's
| worrysome. (I've sat in the back of a Tesla Taxi at Schiphol, and
| that screen is HUGE and carries a lot of non-drive related info
| which "moves")
| mosselman wrote:
| I find much of the responses here frustrating. I see a lot of
| "getting shocked is more dangerous". What the hell? How is
| blindly driving a car through some urban area more dangerous than
| a small shock?
|
| I see so many drivers not engaging with what is happening around
| them, just so they can send some image or read some celebrity
| gossip or whatever the fuck people are doing on their phones. I
| think even stabbing them in the arm with a pencil a few times
| whenever they touch their phone would be less dangerous than
| letting people continue like this.
|
| I really don't get it, in the 10+ years I've had my driver
| license I have never texted and driven. Not once. I HAVE had to
| brake for people on bikes, children, other cars, etc. As everyone
| has. I have also had drivers who were texting almost hit me while
| on foot because they weren't looking up. It is just a matter of
| time for someone to get killed by you if you use your phone while
| driving: the street looks empty, you look down to text Bob "lol I
| know right" and boom, some child just popped out from behind of a
| moving car and you killed it. Wtf are people doing?
| giantg2 wrote:
| The idea of it being more dangerous is that you have someone
| who isn't aware of their surroundings _and then_ you apply a
| shock that surprises them, some people will react with erratic
| movement, increasing the chance that they will "blindly" hit
| something.
|
| So essentially the shock is adding a confounding factor to the
| focal impairment. The only way the shock can reduce the overall
| risk is through prevention. You could do that through other
| less dangerous methods like charging them money instead of
| supplying a shock.
| gknoy wrote:
| Getting charged money, unless you have some audible ping or
| something, won't be noticed, so you don't have the immediacy
| of the enforcement.
|
| Great point on the danger of being shocked while driving,
| though.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I mean, if they're looking at their phone a push
| notification that overlays the texting app should be pretty
| disruptive to the act of texting and immediately enforce
| it.
|
| Actually, I'm not sure if the overlay is possible, but a
| phone call would be pretty intrusive and on speaker phone /
| hands-free would be ok.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Is it wise to shock someone who is driving? I can see some people
| having erratic actions in response.
| [deleted]
| Naushad wrote:
| People use phones, phones have all the sensors required to
| 'sense' if the object/person is in motion. Depending on when it
| is in motion, the phone could partially disbale itself. this
| could be done by phone makers as a feature "Driving Mode". No
| need for extra hardware.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| But moving phones would have to still work for everyone else
| except the driver, and the phone can't tell who is driving, so
| you'd need an off-switch for this that can't be too annoying.
| Lots of people ride a bus twice a day, can't have all of them
| confirm they're not driving every 30 seconds.
| darkfirefly wrote:
| I don't think this really works, for a number of reasons:
|
| - A user-enabled feature for "Driving Mode" probably won't be
| enabled, because drivers intend to use their phone.
|
| - An automatic system that (magically) detects that you are in
| a car won't work, because what if you are a passenger, or in
| the backseat?
|
| - A system which activates when connected with the car's system
| could work, although drivers could again choose not to connect
| or a passenger could be connected instead.
|
| (Although this system wouldn't actually work for learners/under
| 25s many states in Australia, since you are legally not
| permitted to connect your phone to the car stereo)
| nik12795 wrote:
| 25% of car accidents in the US are caused by texting and driving.
| Although I think the "real solution" is self driving cars or some
| other great technology, I wanted to run an experiment where,
| every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked.
|
| The video explains some of the technical details and you get to
| see the hilarious experiment I ran but I'll highlight a few other
| key points.
|
| - I thought a lot about different ways to detect when I look
| down. Originally this was just a solution for pausing the TV when
| I look down to eat so I don't miss my show (lol), so I thought
| about using a camera to track my eyes. I started to go down this
| path but quickly aborted to avoid high costs and an over
| engineered solution.
|
| - I eventually used the MetaMotionC sensor from Mbientlab which
| has an accelerator and gyroscope, among other things (more info
| here: https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/). Their
| documentation wasn't great so it took some time to get the sensor
| working with the Raspberry Pi. The sensor clips onto my glasses,
| so it was pretty simple to tweak the sensitivity settings and
| change it from detecting when you eat food to when you look down
| to text.
|
| - Out of curiosity, does anyone have other use cases for what
| this glasses sensor could be useful for?
|
| - I thought about using the Pi to send a signal to the collar to
| trigger the shock. This seemed pretty daunting to reverse
| engineer. I know I'd need some sort of transmitter to send the
| signal, but how else might I go about reverse engineering it to
| send the correct signal to the collar? Any tools, tutorials, etc
| that people recommend I look into? Might be useful for a future
| project but for this one, I used a solenoid to press the button
| on the remote.
|
| - Using a solenoid to press the TV remote/shock collar remote
| buttons was trivial for me since I recently built a robot that
| plays Guitar Hero (powered by solenoids). I had struggled and
| learned a lot in that project so there weren't any surprises this
| time around.
|
| - The actual texting and driving experiment only took about 30
| minutes to run. But making the device, setting up the driving
| course, filming, editing, etc, made this all take about 6-7
| weeks. Similar to my Guitar Hero robot which was on here a while
| ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838), it probably
| cost around $1,000 for everything (traffic cones are super
| expensive plus smaller costs like Raspberry Pi, shock collar, and
| misc tech parts).
| tgv wrote:
| > every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked
|
| Wouldn't that be even more dangerous?
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I think the idea is you would stop texting while driving,
| rather than keep getting shocked...
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Yes especially if it kills you by causing an accident. I
| guess the question is just how distracting the shock itself
| is
| nik12795 wrote:
| We answer that in the video! You should check it out :)
| snet0 wrote:
| Ah yes but, with the threat of being shocked and causing
| an accident, you will be less likely to text while
| driving, because you don't want to do things that might
| get you into an accident oh hold on a second..
|
| "I wanted to stop smoking, so I got an implant that, when
| I inhale cigarette smoke, releases carcinogens into my
| lungs."
| giantg2 wrote:
| Except there are safer alternatives, like charging a fee
| from the user everytime instead of supplying the shock.
| I'd imagine that would be more lucrative too.
| Rumudiez wrote:
| Sounds like something FAANG could really turn a profit
| with. Update Foogle Maps to prompt for reroutes more
| often, charge them for dismissing the prompt. Rinse and
| repeat...
| andi999 wrote:
| Also what if there is a bug and you get like 100 shocks in a
| row...
|
| Why not instead of a shock link your CC and donate 1$ to a
| politician you like. Just pick the one from last presidential
| election you like less.
| nik12795 wrote:
| If you watch the video, you'll know that donating money was
| another option I considered!
| andi999 wrote:
| Thanks. I shd watch it.
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(page generated 2021-06-28 23:03 UTC)