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January 23, 2011

Another Needless Accident



You hear this same story more and more now a days.  Pedestrians struck by car, Driver was texting.  This is a completely preventable accident.  This morning, it again made headlines here in RI.  A woman and her 4 children were walking, and two children were hit by a car.  These children are recovering in the hospital currently, and hopefully will make a full recovery.  The driver has been charged with Texting while Driving. 

I cannot tell you, just how much this irratates me.  There is absolutely nothing that important where you have to take your eyes off the road and text.  That's why I love Phone Guard.  This is probably the best phone app around, and I think that everyone should have this installed on their phones.

~ Text Disable Feature: Your phones texting capabilities will cease as soon as your car starts to move. Yes, it automatically disables as soon as you start to drive!

~ Time Out Feature: You set available times that your employee or child are allowed to text. Don't want your employees texting while at work or while your child is at school? You can disable texting during work or school hours!

~ Permission Control Feature: Want to know when they are texting? You can set up Phone Guard to request permission to text. Meaning your child or employee MUST ask permission first, to be able to text.

~ Auto Reply Feature: Phone Guard will automatically send a reply text, if a text is received while driving, letting the texter know that you will respond when it is safe to text.

~ Speed Control Feature: This is my favorite feature of all. You set the speed, and if your child or employee go OVER the speed set, you will get an alert! Now how cool is that?

Now, Phone Guard is not a free app. There are different softwares that will suit you. A single licence is $29.99, or purchase a 3 licence software for only $69.99. Now as a bargain hunter, I know when a purchase is a bargain or not. The question you have to ask yourself is, Is $30 or $70 a good bargain? Well is your life, your business, employee's lives or your children's lives worth $30 or $70? Mine is. 

Even if you choose, not to purchase this software, make a conscience decision to put your phone away while you are driving. 








Once you purchase your software, there's no need to purchase again if you get a new phone. One simple phone call to customer service will transfer your software to your new phone.

2 comments:

Erik January 23, 2011 at 4:30 PM  

Real change on this issue is going to come from the end user - the delivery man, the car pooling mom, or the teen driver deciding to change their habits. From truckers to moms to teens that I spoke with on the issue of text and drive - there was one common thread. If presented with a Big Brother type lock down alternative, they will immediately seek "to get around it". This does not constitute change on our highways. Selling expensive software that is supposed to lock down the activity forgets that it is the end user (the driver) who will ultimately decide. Let's change behavior and we will see those violent crash rates plummet...now.

I decided to do something about distracted driving after my three year old daughter was nearly run down right in front of me by a texting driver. Instead of a shackle that locks down phones and alienates the user (especially teens) I built a tool called OTTER that is a simple GPS based, texting auto reply app for smartphones. OTTER also silences those distracting call ringtones unless a bluetooth is enabled. OTTER is four dollars with no fees which demonstrates how accessible this technology is right now. I think if we can empower the individual then change will come to our highways now and not just our laws.

Erik Wood, owner
OTTER LLC
OTTER app

G January 24, 2011 at 7:26 AM  

Erik, You are absolutely correct. It is up to the person to make the change. Whether someone purchases a $70 piece of software, a $4 piece of software or just makes a conscience decision to put the phones away when driving, it doesn't matter, just as long as we all stop the needless distractions while driving is all that really matters here.

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