Apple Patents Tech That Can Block Users From Texting While Driving

We know that texting while driving is bad and should be avoided at all costs. There are countless reports about the dangers of tapping away on your smartphone behind the wheel that it really shouldn’t be necessary to hammer this point home every time. Unfortunately there are still a lot of drivers out there that put their lives and the lives of others at risk. There are a lot of apps available that can stop users from texting while driving, and today the USTPO published an Apple patent about technology that can block users from doing just that.

The obvious advantage of this technology would be the fact that it would most likely be baked into iOS. So all compatible devices will get this feature without users having to pay for it. Titled “Driver handheld computing device lock-out” the patent explains a system that can “intelligently” determine whether the user is driving, and when it does, the system shuts off the function.

Apple lists two methods through which the lock-out system can determine if a user is driving. First would rely upon on-board sensors on the device to find out if a user is trying to text behind the wheel. The other method would utilize blocking signals being transmitted from the car to the iOS device.

The existing CarPlay feature can be leveraged to provide blocking signals to the iOS device. This way users won’t be able to access distracting functions like SMS messaging when they’re driving. Hopefully this will make roads safer around the world. Apple hasn’t confirmed as yet if it intends to add this feature in the upcoming major iOS update.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: patents, texting