NHTSA Wants Your Phone to Know If You're Driving

First, it came for your car’s infotainment interface. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is after your phone.

The road safety regulator has proposed a new set of guidelines designed to combat rising distracted driving deaths, and part of it involves making your phone aware of where you’re sitting. Specifically, that seat behind the wheel.

Issued today, the voluntary guidelines — aimed at mobile device makers — are the second phase of NHTSA’s plan to crack down on driver cell phone use. The first phase, issued in 2013, targeted automakers and electronic devices installed as original equipment.

Despite the creation of technology allowing drivers to dial and text hands-free and infotainment systems that keep some functions off limits when the vehicle is in gear, roadway carnage is still on the rise. Distraction-related crashes in the U.S. rose 8.8 percent between 2014 and 2015, leading to 3,477 deaths. Of them, cell phone use is a growing contributor.

According to NHTSA:

The proposed, voluntary guidelines are designed to encourage portable and aftermarket electronic device developers to design products that, when used while driving, reduce the potential for driver distraction. The guidelines encourage manufacturers to implement features such as pairing, where a portable device is linked to a vehicle’s infotainment system, as well as Driver Mode, which is a simplified user interface.

In simpler terms, it means your phone could soon make all apps and games off limits. No texting, either. Other functions could also be locked out.

While it’s a simple task for a vehicle’s infotainment system to shut down certain functions of a paired device when in motion, it’s another thing for an unconnected phone to do the same. Having your phone know when it’s in a moving vehicle — and in the possession of someone behind the wheel — stretches the boundaries of today’s technology. It also feels a bit like Minority Report.

A mobile device’s accelerometer could be used to detect motion and lock out functions, but that would affect everyone in the vehicle, not just the driver. (It would also screw with people on a train or bus.)

The regulator is all too aware of this:

NHTSA has learned that technologies to detect whether a driver or passenger is using a device have been developed but are currently being refined such that they can reliably detect whether the device user is the driver or a passenger and are not overly annoying and impractical.

Until this driver-spying technology enters the marketplace, developers might have to fall back on a low-tech solution — having drivers manually activate Driver Mode on their portable device.

The Phase 2 guidelines also apply to aftermarket device. The public can weigh in on the proposed guidelines for the next 60 days at regulations.gov