PROPERTY INVESTMENT firm Clear Sky Capital has raised $2 million (€1.5 million) from private investors in a bid to bring to Europe a new technology that prevents people sending texts and e-mails while driving.
Clear Sky has formed a joint venture with the US developer of the technology called Drive Safely Europe. The technology requires phone users to enter a series of random characters on screen if they try to send a text while travelling at more than 19km/h (12mph). If the onscreen characters are not input, correctly the text messaging application shuts down.
The system can use either built- in GPS or triangulation between transmission masts to determine if the phone is in motion. Users also receive onscreen warnings that texting while driving is illegal.
Unlike competing solutions, Drive Safely is implemented by network operators rather than as an application on a phone. According to Clear Sky managing director Ciarán Hynes, it is middleware that sits on the network so there is no application that users can disable.
However, this also presents the biggest challenge for the technology as Drive Safely wants all mobile operators in a market to implement it. Mr Hynes said if this did not happen, teenagers and other groups who were more likely to text while driving would simply move to networks that were not implementing it.
Drive Safely Europe is meeting the four Irish network operators – Vodafone, O2, Meteor and 3 Ireland – as a group next month to discuss implementing the technology.
Drive Safely Inc, the US developer of the technology, is in negotiations with operators in the US to implement the technology.
Verizon, the largest US mobile network, is currently conducting trials of the technology with the University of Iowa. It is proposed that mobile users would pay an additional 20 US cents a month to fund the implementation of the system. Revenue would be split between the carrier, the state government and Drive Safely.
Mr Hynes said the company was considering a similar model in Ireland and other European markets. However, he claimed any increase in the cost for mobile-phone users would be offset by a fall in insurance premiums as the cost of claims would fall.
The phenomenon of “distracted driving” has been attracting huge attention in the US, where it is estimated to have caused 6,000 road deaths. Sending text messages and other communications from mobile phones are thought to have contributed significantly to this.
US chatshow host Oprah Winfrey has spearheaded a high-profile campaign to have texting while driving banned.
The average American teenager sends 1,900 texts a month and someone texting while driving is 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash, according to data supplied by Clear Sky.
