If a few states have their way, drivers who like to drive and text will be given DWT (Driving While Texting) citations and fines according to a New York Times story.
This means services that have IVR with Speech to Text capability and Text to Speech are going to be very big. This will help explain the acquisition of TellMe makes so much more sense now.
Its funny that the first of the states that has DWT legislation signed into law was Washington, home of TellMe acquirer Microsoft, a point missed by the New York Times.
Is that sheer coincidence or part of a greater plan by Microsoft? Regardless, laws like these are why Yahoo and MSFT both have moved aggressively into a speech based data entry and reply mode for applications and services. We live in a mobile society and mobile phone service is everywhere, and mobile data use, especially with Blackberrys and Windows Mobile 6.0 devices. People won’t stop using them, so a voice interface while driving via a headset or in car speakerphone will be the way to do it, to avoid DWTs.
Andy,
It’s certainly a big deal, but I have to wonder how exactly it will be enforced? I think it is merely a convenience law, to scare most people from trying to do it at all, and to have something else to stack on top of another citation. I.e. you rear-end someone at a stop sign. Normally you would only get a citation for that. But now they can ask, “And what were you doing at the time?” and if you say “I was texting…” BAM! There’s another citation for the incident.
I just don’t really see how they could enforce this legitimately. Even if they had some way for a cop to sit on the side of a road, how could he prove that’s what you were doing? There’s too many if’s, in my opinion, for this to be anything to take notice of.
-Ricky