There are currently no fewer than six bills being considered by the Ohio General Assembly that would ban texting while driving. Congress is also considering passing a ban, tied to Federal transportation dollars.

As physical texting while driving moves toward extinction, there are some new tech solutions for drivers who want to send and recieve messages.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

As lawmakers take steps to outlaw texting while driving, technology companies are promoting systems that let drivers receive and respond to messages without taking their hands off the wheel or their eyes off the road.

The federal government says driving while distracted — often by mobile devices — was responsible for nearly 6,000 deaths and a half million injuries in 2008.

“A lot of people are looking into how to make this activity safer,” said John Walls, spokesman for the Communications Technology Industry Association.

…

Available as a free download that can read out 25-word texts or as a $3.95 per month service that can read 500-word e-mails, DriveSafe.ly converts incoming text messages into audio files and plays them for the driver.

It can automatically respond to texts, too, telling the sender that the recipient is driving and can’t return messages.

Since launching the application in late September, iSpeech has attracted 60,000 users. On average, the company is converting 1.5 million text messages into audio files each week.

Apple iPhone users who search “text-to-speech” at Apple’s online App Store can find several similar programs, including the $4.99 Voice Text Pro from HRL Technologies.

Tags: Congress, iPhone, Ohio General Assembly

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 8:04 am and is filed under Government, Wireless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.