Stay Focused on the Road

(myfoxboston) - Most all of us do it every time we get behind the wheel of a car. And it's the cause of countless accidents.

“Very often you'll ask people after a crash, you know, ‘What happened?’ and they'll say, ‘Well you know, I was driving along and I was changing the radio station or I was programming my GPS or something and I didn't see the traffic stop and I hit the car from behind,’" says State Trooper Eric Benson.

Talking on the phone, reading a map, switching CD's in your car stereo, are all common distractions.

And perhaps worst of all is texting while driving.

“We recommend that operators never text message while driving, even in stopped traffic,” advises Trooper Benson.

Today's drivers are doing everything except keeping their two hands on the wheel and their eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.

But that's all changing thanks to two local companies.

Now many of those in-car tasks can be accomplished just using your voice.

"Enter destination," says a driver to his GPS unit.

"Pre-selected state is Massachusetts. Do you want to enter town first or street first?" asks the computer voice on the GPS unit.

"Town," answers the driver

“Basically, the things you always used to do, like change the radio station, change the temperature in your car, by taking your eyes off the road, by turning your body and tweaking a knob, you can now do simply by speaking,” explains Steve Chambers, President of the Mobile and Enterprise Division of Nuance Communications located in Burlington, Massachusetts.

"Gas station," commands a driver, speaking to his GPS unit.

"Please select a line number or say the POI name," asks the computer voice emanating from the Tom-Tom GO 740 LIVE GPS unit.

"Mobile," responds the driver.

"Do you want to start route guidance?" asks the female-sounding voice from the GPS unit.

Chambers’s company creates the technology that allows you to talk to your car.

“Just using your voice, let's you surf for music, let's you control your mp3 player, let's you change the temperature, let's you enter into a destination while you're in motion for real time navigation. So, all of those things really are about hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, no distractions, so it's a pretty significant benefit to safety,” says Chambers.

Even GPS devices are adopting voice recognition technology.

“The newest product that we offer, the GO 740 LIVE, now allows the user to give over 130 standard commands to the device, just using their voice. And we believe this contributes to ease of use, but also importantly, to safe driving,” says Tom Murray, of Concord-based Tom-Tom

Murray also believes that speech recognition technology will reduce driver distraction.

“The speech recognition feature is very important to us as we try to insure that people are getting the benefits of a navigation device in a Tom-Tom set of instructions while they are driving but also that they are keeping their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road,” says Murray.

Keeping people focused on the job of driving is one of the immediate goals of this growing technology.

“If I’m reaching down to press a button or change a station or do a temperature slider, that whole time, in addition to manually touching the knobs etcetera, that whole time of distraction we collapse by a factor of five or six. You simply have to speak a command, eyes straight forward on the road. So, it's a pretty significant difference related to distract ness,” says Chambers.

And the fewer things there are to distract a driver's attention, the safer we'll all be.

“We would like to see operators focus more intently on the road and on maintaining control of their vehicle and to avoid distractions, any distractions,” advises Benson.