

Sonalight (YC W12) Lets You Text While Driving Without Touching A Phone - sskates
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/sonalight-lets-android-users-text-while-driving-without-touching-a-phone/

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pavel_lishin
Haven't studies shown that it's not the physical act of interacting with a
phone that causes distraction, but rather focusing on conversing with someone
not physically present?

~~~
aseemk
I dunno about studies, but for me it's definitely the eyes-not-on-the-road.
I'm so thankful I haven't gotten into a crash despite the few times I've been
stupid enough to text while driving.

~~~
derwiki
[http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/Cogn...](http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Pages/CognitiveDistraction.aspx)

"While many people know texting while driving increases crash risk, the lack
of understanding about the risks of phone conversation while driving remains a
challenge. Talking on hands-free or handheld cell phones requires the brain to
multitask – a process it cannot do safely while driving."

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dannyr
I was watching PG's interview on Bloomberg yesterday on he said that most YC
startups choose to develop on iOS first then port it to Android. (I can't
remember if he said he advises startups to do iOS first before Android).

My guess is this is cannot be easily done on iOS.

Android's API has been more open than iOS.

~~~
sskates
We did choose to start with Android because it has more powerful APIs. We
don't want to cut out half of the smartphone market though, so we'll get once
we're happy with Android we'll move onto iOS.

~~~
PhrosTT
The upside to Android is you can push fixes to market in a matter of hours -
so you can iterate faster and worry less about accidentally pushing crippling
bugs.

~~~
sskates
This is absolutely correct and I had forgotten about this huge advantage until
you just mentioned it. We've been on a very aggressive release schedule,
pushing major overhauls to the app every 2 weeks since we started in August.
It definitely wouldn't have been possible to move as fast on iOS.

~~~
jansen
I can assure you that the process of iteration is horrible on iOS. It's awful
to be in the situation having a team that is able to learn fast and develop
improvements within days, but then having to wait a 7 day cycle for every new
improvement or test. Plus from time to time Apple will just reject you - last
weekend our update (a bug fix update!) was rejected because of a method name
we were carrying for months. This is really not helping anybody, neither app
developers nor users.

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PhrosTT
"Amazingly, the trick even works when the phone is just sitting there, its
screen black, and sleeping. Say “text by voice” and it wakes up"

I'm pretty sure this is impossible without aggressive battery draw. Altho if
you're driving you can be using a car charger. The GPS already makes this
neccessary unless you want to risk killing your phone before it guides you
home.

It would be nice if they could hook into the 'car dock' app or google maps nav
- so that their background service auto launches when those launch. I believe
that's possible with some egregious permissions.

Also maybe get the 'charger in' permission and actively listen whenever the
phone is plugged in.

Cool idea.

~~~
jaredhansen
>I'm pretty sure this is impossible without battery rape.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record on HN about this, but this kind of
comment trivializes actual, no-kidding rape by comparing it to a low battery,
and comes across as inherently misogynistic even if you didn't intend it that
way.

If we really want to be serious about opening up tech and getting more women
involved, and more importantly if we want a world with less rape in it, we've
got to cut this kind of thing out.

~~~
kdommeyer
If he said it "kills the battery" would you say that it trivializes actual,
no-kidding murder? I doubt it.

Also, men can get raped too. I don't just mean women raping men; men rape men
too. (Would a "Don't drop the soap" joke be too inappropriate here?) It could
be argued that assuming only women can be raped is the misogynistic position.

Last, saying that we've got to cut this out "if we want a world with less rape
in it" is, frankly, ridiculous. Nobody is going to read the "battery rape"
comment and subsequently be more likely to rape someone.

~~~
pavel_lishin
This kills the crab.

------
JulianMorrison
Clever but stupid. You divide your attention this way and you will end up dead
in a ditch.

~~~
sskates
It's a shame that we get this reaction. Emergency workers, truck drivers, and
couriers all use our app and find it really helpful because they have to spend
all day driving and want a safe way to communicate. (My favorite is a group of
patrol officers in Kentucky who have Android phones attached to docks in their
squad cars and use our app.)

Somehow even though it's risky and illegal, one third of drivers choose to
text and drive. It's hard to get solid numbers, but around a few thousand
people die every year in the US because of this, as well as causing hundreds
of thousands of injuries[1]. Any way we can make driving safer overall is a
net win.

[http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20...](http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/NSC%20Estimate%20Summary.pdf)

~~~
zafer
People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no
matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the
positive direction, no doubt about it.

~~~
jamesbritt
_People that are going to send messages while driving are going to do it no
matter what. This app makes it much more safer that's all. Its a step in the
positive direction, no doubt about it._

_Safe_, or just safer?

There can be problems with people thinking that risk has been reduced or
eliminated; it can encourage more risky behavior.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1821731...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18217318)

"It seems counterintuitive to give drivers less information, by taking away
street signs, stop lights and lane markings, to make them drive more safely."

Also, <http://bicycleuniverse.info/eqp/helmets-nyt.html>

"Specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They
believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended
consequence: Riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more
risks."

Absent specific studies on this there's room for doubt about "much more
safer".

------
dutchbrit
Tested this out yesterday on a friends Android Phone, very impressive to say
the least.

Voice to Text... \- Who do you want to text? Nobody \- Aborting (something
along these lines at least).

Shame it's not possible for the iPhone, activating an app via voice while it's
sleeping. Very cool!

Shame that you can't select your language (Dutch/French/German etc...) - I
wonder if this uses the Google Voice API?

~~~
sskates
We do use the built in speech recognition that's part of Android. We
definitely want to do other languages (and luckily Google supports a lot of
languages), but are focusing on English for the short term and will expand
once we get that right.

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flyingobj
Any plans to move on to gtalk or maybe gmail? I'm trying to avoid txting in
general. Love the product, it's running whenever I drive alone. Thanks

~~~
sskates
Glad you like it! We'll definitely move to email and chat once we get texting
down perfectly. We still have a ways to go.

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raccoonone
Wow, this is awesome! Definitely gonna try this out next time I'm driving and
texting...I mean, driving and _thinking_ about texting! ;)

~~~
sskates
Somehow it's one of these things that everyone does but nobody admits to. Any
way we can make driving safer is a win.

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FiddlerClamp
How is this different or better than Vlingo? (Which by the way uses a more
generic wake-up request - "Hey, Vlingo")

~~~
sskates
Vlingo's interaction is mostly hands-free, but there are a lot of points where
it really wants you to push a button or read the text on-screen. We've also
found it's confusing for first time users who want to send text messages,
while we've tried to make it almost impossible to mess up while using our app.

Small anecdote: I knew we were onto something when I got my mom a new Android
phone for Christmas and she managed to send a text without a hiccup on her
first try- she had never used voice tech or even a smartphone up to that
point.

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abbasmehdi
Wonder how many traffic accidents these guys will prevent? I am guessing a
lot! Actually, they will also prevent tickets you get from texting while
driving in California. I have gotten one and it sucked!

Definitely worth trying, especially for a hyper-connected road warrior like
myself.

~~~
esharef
Wow, I am the worst offender in terms of driving and texting.

Pretty scary (and stupid on the part of those of us who do text and drive)
since according to Wikipedia, "the risk of crashing while texting /driving
increases by 23 times, because reading or sending a text diverts the driver's
eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds"

I'm from Germany which has really strict laws on this and all phone activity
(texting, calling, emailing) is forbidden while the engine is on (leave it to
the Germans to be this strict).

~~~
stingraycharles
Not only in Germany, it's a common restriction in many European countries: see
page 44 of <http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Report_Nomadic_Devices.pdf> for a
list of legislations in Europe in 2009.

------
myko
Voice commands already do most of this on Android pretty easily, and have for
a long time. It looks like the real advantage here is setting it up before you
start driving and being able to interact without long pressing the search
button - but that seems pretty rough on the battery.

~~~
sskates
We agree a large part of the advantage is not touching the phone at all. I
disagree about voice commands though- if you put that app in the hands of
someone who's never used it before, most people will give up before they
successfully send a text.

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michaelmwu
Nice job guys! The Google voice settings are a little clunky though.

~~~
mehuln
Wish my siri-less iPhone had this option.

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tuananh
I'm not a fan of texting/calling while driving. I wouldn't text someone while
driving, nor replying. If it's urgent, people wouldn't text me anyway.

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slug
How does it deal with a PIN protected phone when in sleep mode? Maybe there's
a security issue there or does it ask for the PIN through voice?

~~~
sskates
It won't be able to popup behind the locked screen because of the security
issues you mention, but you can still use the app through voice. The worst an
attacker that got hold of your phone could do is use the app to send text
messages and read any messages that the phone received while they had control
of it.

------
mirsadm
What are you guys using for voice recognition? Seems to be having some trouble
with my Australian/German/Eastern European accent :)

~~~
sskates
Sorry it's giving you so much trouble! We're using Google's default voice
recognition engine. It does allow for different accents, but we haven't turned
this ability on in the app. If it's getting names wrong, you can also try
spelling the contact name one letter at a time, that usually works for people.

