
Ask HN: Why can’t Apple and Google prevent drivers using phones? - hguhghuff
Is this an impossible problem?<p>Surely it’s something worth solving because people are being killed and injured daily because there’s no way for s phone to prevent itself being used by a driver.
======
ocdtrekkie
So, cars are reasonably successful at a feature like this, most cars'
infotainment systems disable a lot of functionality when the vehicle is in
motion, and it highlights the same problems phones will have.

For one, as a passenger I am sometimes trying to help my grandma set her clock
in her car after a time change. But I have to wait until the car is stopped,
because it doesn't allow it, even though I am not driving. Similarly, I'm
annoyed that in my own car, I can't look at contacts beyond the favorites
list, or dial a phone number from the touchscreen on my car unless the vehicle
is stopped. Even a passenger can't use those features while the car is moving.

I found out that it's a simple hack to override this "feature". For cars like
mine that don't have GPS navigation, you can easily just remove the connection
between the car's speedometer and the infotainment system. For those that do,
there's often aftermarket kits to install a switch so you can turn that
connection on and off, as you still need it for navigation console use.

So the issue with phones is that it's likely whatever you come up with will
annoy passengers excessively, in addition to drivers. And that in a lot of
cases, it will lead people to hack/root their phones to remove the
functionality. (While people are somewhat resistant to hacking their cars,
hacking their phones is vastly more likely.) Furthermore, while Apple or
Google could implement this sort of functionality, no other OEM can. Because
if your Samsung started doing this, a lot of people would switch to LG
instead. The company that does this first will hurt themselves, since
consumers will consider alternatives. (Which likely means this would only be
built if the government mandated the feature by law.)

------
Someone
I think a main problem is that not everybody moving at some velocity >v is
driving a vehicle.

You won’t want to disable the phones of passengers as collateral damage.

Another, likely smaller, problem is that drivers may use their phone for
routing, gps recording, playing music, etc.

