
Toyota ad hijacks Siri to switch off iPhones while driving - johansch
http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1355388/clever-toyota-ad-hijacks-siri-switch-off-iphones-driving
======
kaolinite
Clever? There are plenty of completely valid uses for having a phone on whilst
driving - such as navigation, streaming music or using CarPlay. As an iPhone
needs to be plugged in to use "Hey Siri", this will pretty much entirely
affect people using their devices legitimately - whereas people driving with
one hand whilst they make a phone call with the other will be unaffected.

This seems like it would be more likely to cause an accident as people have to
divert attention from driving to mess with their phone so they can get
navigation back (and having listened to the advert, I know I would be very
distracted by it).

Finally, is this even legal? I have no idea of the law in Sweden (and IANAL)
but I feel like you could make the point that this advert is interfering with
your device without authorisation.

~~~
SloopJon
Sounds to me like Toyota accessed thousands of computers without
authorization.

~~~
matt_morgan
Overreaction. Is it illegal for me to talk to your phone? To broadcast myself
with a megaphone, in a crowd, and yell "Hey Siri, turn on airplane mode"?

Is it illegal for me to unplug your computer? Jerkish, sure, but illegal only,
maybe, in very rare circumstances.

~~~
joshstrange
I think you are missing the point. Sure, it's an overreaction but if an
individual did it as a prank you can bet some prosecutor would try to make a
name for themselves by throwing the book at them. What's fair for the goose...

------
MiguelHudnandez
A clever idea with unintended consequences.

Now my docked phone in navigation mode is disabled, and I have to fumble for
the airplane mode switch to then it back on, distracting me.

Or, my passenger, texting urgent details to someone else while plugged in to
power, loses connection and doesn't realize. His message, "don't delete pied
piper," never makes it to staff and a startup is ruined.

Or, the cell phone hidden the in the car by a jealous husband gets switched
off, convincing him that the jig is up and an unstable situation turns grim.

Google and Apple should treat this as a security vulnerability. I think there
were pranks related to Xbox voice control as well.

~~~
sneak
As a driver, the only thing you _have_ to do is pay complete attention to the
road and drive safely. It is not Toyota's fault if you stop doing that to fuck
with your phone, even if they disabled your nav.

~~~
StavrosK
"As a driver, the only thing you have to do is pay complete attention to the
road and drive safely. It is not the company's fault if they played an ad
that's just sirens and horns and people screaming, distracting you."

~~~
viraptor
If I could legally ban one thing in music, it would definitely be car horns
and emergency vehicle sounds. There's nothing more annoying than hearing a
horn and trying to decide if you need to emergency stop now, or if it was just
some idiot deciding to put it in their music. Especially if you stream/shuffle
and have no idea what song is coming up next.

~~~
randrews
That's a valid point, because no one listens to music when they're not in a
car, ever.

~~~
viraptor
It's great how sarcasm tags are not needed and people don't take obvious
exaggeration seriously even once in their entire lives.

------
just_had_coffee
I am a cyclist. I am always _incredibly_ wary when I see drivers using their
phones. Yes, this happens a lot, and yes I am in the habit of looking very
carefully if drivers have seen me or not. Usually they don't and drive as if I
don't exist – it's so frequent that I am nearly driven over, that I have
become a rather defensive cyclist. But indeed, apart from random aggressive
people (e.g., just yesterday on my way home from work, a car shaved past me at
rather high speed (about 50-60km/h at 10cm max) with youths shouting at me) on
of my biggest gripes is people who text at the wheel. It's insane.

(disclosure: I live in France, and as far as cycling culture/acceptance and
infrastructure is concerned, this is a third-world country)

~~~
coldtea
> _I am a cyclist. I am always incredibly wary when I see drivers using their
> phones._

OTOH, I'm always wary when I see cyclists on roads where heavy boxes run with
40-80 miles per hour...

~~~
scrollaway
Where would you want cyclists to go exactly? Sidewalks filled with
pedestrians? Not every road has a cycling path.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
By foot? By car? By bus? "Cyclist" isn't a race or religion. He's not telling
them "to go" anywhere. He's saying that if you choose to use a mode of
transport that is a hazard and nuisance to others, you are in a glass house
and shouldn't be throwing stones.

~~~
Frondo
A cyclist isn't a hazard to an autoist. Maybe to the paint on their two-ton
vehicle, but not to them bodily.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
They are a hazard because drivers need to take actions to avoid them. It turns
the road into an obstacle course, except with unpredictable obstacles that
rarely follow traffic rules like red lights.

~~~
Frondo
I spend a lot of time on the road, and I see autoists running red lights far
more frequently than cyclists. Cyclists are at a lot greater risk getting out
into any intersection, it'd be suicide (literally) to put ourselves into the
path of oncoming traffic.

I do see this remark ("you dumb kids on your bikes break all the traffic
laws!!") on all the web forums for the local newspaper, whenever any article
comes along about bike lanes or whatever. I just don't see people on bikes
breaking traffic laws anywhere near as often as people in cars.

As for needing to avoid things, would you call traffic circles or pedestrians
a "hazard" as well? Again, you're in a two-ton metal box, none of this stuff
is going to do anything more than scratch your paint.

------
Matt3o12_
I don't think this is a particularly good idea because the first thing I'd do
is switching it back one. I might miss an important call. And we have Siri and
headsets to make calling while driving as secure as talking to a child while
driving. So why would anyone turn the hands free functionality off and require
the driver to pick up the phone and turn it on. This endangers driving, not
using siri/Google voice whole driving.

~~~
rwallace
> And we have Siri and headsets to make calling while driving as secure as
> talking to a child while driving.

Apparently, headsets do not make calling while driving as safe as talking to a
passenger while driving. If something happens, a passenger in the car with you
will see it and instinctively shut up. Someone at the other end of the phone
won't know anything is going on and will keep talking, keeping your attention
distracted. Not for long, to be sure, but when you're behind the wheel of a
car, half a second can easily make the difference between life and death.

~~~
Matt3o12_
That's a good point but remember that some passengers are not that good at
keeping an eye on the row (I also often talk to a driver when I shouldn't
without realizing it and he needs to shut me up).

But encouraging people to use safer alternatives is better then banning (or
preventing) these alternatives because some people will always use a phone in
the car. Remember that the average John Smith salesman who is about to use his
phone to call his costumer doesn't immediately know how to turn off the
airplane mode. He might be distracted for quite a while because he can't
figure out why siri is not working. And if he is in a hurry, he will certainly
not pull over!

~~~
lfowles
> That's a good point but remember that some passengers are not that good at
> keeping an eye on the row (I also often talk to a driver when I shouldn't
> without realizing it and he needs to shut me up).

Yes, as a driver I take it as my responsibility to shush people (whether
talking via a handsfree arrangement or with passengers) when I need
concentration or something unexpected has come up on the road.

------
imd23
I ended up in a river because of switching a Spotify playlist. It was a
miracle that saved my friends and me. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, PUT YOUR PHONE
AWAY WHILE DRIVING. NOTHING, NOTHING CAN'T BE MORE IMPORTANT IN THOSE MINUTES
YOU DRIVE THAT YOUR OR OTHER PEOPLES' LIFE. Want to check your phone? stop,
check it and continue.

~~~
rsync
"I ended up in a river because of switching a Spotify playlist."

That is a profound level of incompetence along a number of dimensions.
Obligatory: ThisIsWhyWeCan'tHaveNiceThings.

~~~
Houshalter
Tons of people have gotten in accidents doing things like adjusting the radio
or air conditioning. Your car travels 88 feet blind every second you are
distracted.

~~~
code_duck
Sometimes I drive at speeds other than 60 mph.

------
brobinson
I used my iPhone for turn-by-turn directions because it was far superior to
the navigation functionality built into my car. This ad could potentially have
caused me to _have_ to interact with my phone while driving to disable
airplane mode and allow me to resume navigation.

~~~
sneak
No, it cannot cause that. You may illegally choose to then grab your phone
while driving to fiddle with the settings, but that is your own reckless and
negligent choice.

~~~
viraptor
It may definitely cause you to drive around in unknown area while trying to
figure out where you can stop to turn the navigation back on. If you're on a
motorway, that may be an additional 20+ miles until you can stop safely.

If it happens to kill your navigation, it's going to cause a lot of
unnecessary distraction. Whether you decide to turn it on again while driving
or wait until you can stop.

------
neotek
This is the advertising equivalent of clickbait - make a video about an ad
which maybe ran a handful of times, if it even aired at all, in the hopes of
that video going viral and stimulating press coverage.

Pizza Hut recently did something similar with their pizza box projector[1], a
fun little idea which ultimately probably only directly reached a few hundred
customers but which millions of people around the world read an article about.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pizza-hut-box-turns-
into-m...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pizza-hut-box-turns-into-movie-
projector-for-your-smartphone-2015-6)

------
coldtea
Let's be clear: this is more an ad to cause people to think of/buy Toyota than
an actual thing that worked.

What we saw in the ad is an ideal situation for the mechanism.

Only a miniscule amount of iPhones will be affected by this. In real life,
iPhones won't be plugged in, won't have Hello Siri enabled (an explicit thing
to do), won't be turned to a station that plays the ad, and so on.

------
jamesbrownuhh
'The ad relies on the fact that an iPhone, if plugged in and charging, will
wake up on the voice command "Hey Siri"'

\-- actually, an iPhone will only respond to Hey Siri if you have _explicitly_
turned that feature on - it's not enabled by default and I would imagine that
the vast majority of people wouldn't have bothered.

------
thisjepisje
"Toyota makes front page of HN with silly gimmick"

------
vmarsy
I have the same issue with my Xbox one: If a commercial on TV says :"now
available on Xbox one", the Xbox interprets "Xbox one" as "Xbox ON" and turn
on by itself.

But here this is a malicious use of the feature. It doesn't even assume there
might be other people in the car. I wouldn't be surprised if people start
boycotting Toyotas if they get disturbed by this stupid ad.

I noticed on windows 10 you can switch Cortana to "recognize my voice". This
would fix the problem for anyone with a voice sufficiently different from the
ad

------
delish
Many comments are saying, "This ad exposed people to danger."

Zooming out, lots of ads expose people many kinds of danger. It's easier to
criticize this ad because the danger-connection is obvious. It's harder to run
robust thought-experiments about the effect of thousands of unhealthy food ads
(or gambling ads, smoking ads, 411 scams, credit card offers). But the
(speaking unscientifically) aggregate millions of extra calories consumed is a
big deal.

So saying, "Toyota shouldn't've done this" neglects wider contexts.

------
mukyu
They think it is a world first, there there was an Xbox one ad[0] that was
doing this over a year ago. They could have easily found it just googling
"voice command ad" or similar.

[0] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/16/aaron-paul-xbox-
one...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/16/aaron-paul-xbox-one-voice-
command_n_5500189.html)

------
wrs
I can't find it now, but I'm certain I saw a story about a late-night
television infomercial that used "OK Google" to dial a premium long distance
number. As I recall, the show was pulled off the air in minutes.

------
vbezhenar
Hey, Windows! Format C colon slash y enter

That was a joke many years ago. Not so joke today?

~~~
DanBC
Funnier was to label a disc with ANSI commands. Anyone doing a directory
listing would end up with blinking text or garish colours.

------
RRRA
So what is the shortest wav that can disable both iOS and Android? ;)

~~~
joshstrange
iOS: Settings -> General -> Siri -> Toggle "Allow 'Hey Siri'"

------
tomjen3
This should be considered hacking, not to mention interfering with driving, as
you know some people would start fiddeling with their phones (without
thinking).

------
nnutter
My phone got part way through the process while watching the video. The lock
screen prevented it from working.

------
gtirloni
If a GPS system needs my 3G/4G connection to work, I'm not using it. Period.

Clever ad, btw. It's not like they are running this every day to enforce some
law. It might be a little distraction (on top of the other 200
distraction/minute you get while driving) but it's good press, and for a good
reason.

------
rebootthesystem
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rClJW9gnchc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rClJW9gnchc)

I wish there was something one could do every time we see someone staring at
their phone while driving. I've seen it so many times. I wonder how many
accidents those people have caused.

Frankly, the problem does have a technological solution. Is there no interest
on the part of companies like Apple to fix the problem? I wonder how many
people have been killed by iPhones and other "smart" phones?

One of the first things I noticed about smart phones was just how much more of
your attention and focus they require for normal use. I've owned cellphones
dating back to when they were the size of a shoe-box, including many
Blackberry's. The last Blackberry I owned could be used with one hand. In
fact, most everything I needed to do could be done with my thumb by using the
rotary encoder on the side.

The minute we went to touch screens things changed radically. Usability, from
a certain perspective, suffered greatly. A touch interface is inherently
fragile. With physical buttons you know what you are touching without looking.
You can learn shape and location based cues that do not require looking at the
phone. A touch interface cannot be explored. If you touch the screen a mm this
way or that way you can make an absolute mess out of things. A touch interface
requires that you look at he phone and focus on it intently enough that your
brain task switches during that time.

My own test is what I call the "Mom and Dad Test". I can deal with my kids in
the back seat and retain far more attention on the road and my surroundings
than when I have to look at and interact with a smart phone. The act of
operating a smart phone, reading small type, locating buttons, menu's,
understating state and then precisely touching small controls, seems to
require far more CPU cycles than most other distractions.

Of course, I haven't conducted any studies. This isn't my field. This is just
conjecture and one data point. Having one teenage kid now driving we had to
make sure we pounded the "don't use the phone while driving" message into his
head. It's scary, actually. And, it is also scary to realize that you could be
perfectly responsible while someone in another car might plow into you because
they were focusing on a small little button on their iPhone to be able to
click it.

I hate government over-regulation and the insertion into our lives. However,
this might just be a case where a law or mandate is required. It needs to be
simple. We don't need a new government agency with 100,000 employees and
50,000 pages of rules. It can be stated very clearly: By the year 2020 car
drivers should not be able to use their phones while the vehicle is in motion.
Let car and phone manufacturers figure out how to accomplish this feat. If it
means nobody in the car can use their phone.

One of the arguments being made is that for navigation. Frankly, I hate using
navigation on my iPhone. It goes back to the fragility of the interface. I
have a dedicated GPS unit on the dashboard. It's pretty hard to screw up and
it is pretty much immune to fumbling. The using Apple/Google for navigation on
the iPhone can fall pray to the issues and fragility of a touch screen system
with a pile of unrelated apps.

How many of you are willing to lose your kids or your own life to the issues
introduced by smart phones while driving? Right.

Apple has enough money to figure out how to solve this problem. They need to
solve this problem.

------
eyeareque
This makes me wonder, does the "hey Siri" recognition happen on the phone or
on their servers? If it happens on the server does that mean that it's
secretly uploading a recording of everything I say?

~~~
kaolinite
No, it's 100% local. Even ignoring the privacy concerns of uploading
everything you say, it would simply use too much data.

You also need to opt-in: it's turned off by default and can be enabled by
going to Settings > General > Siri > Allow "Hey Siri."

