NHTSA Issues Distracted Driving Guidelines
It appears that the in-car connectivity party might be over. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released a voluntary set of guidelines that asks car companies to rule out the ability to surf the web or 'video phone' while driving. The idea is to reduce driver distractions, which have become one of the main causes of road accidents in both the United States and Canada.
The guidelines issued by the NHTSA also recommend that automakers disable any manual texting features offered by a car, any kind of video display that can be seen by the driver, and certain displays of text (such as an incoming text message, email, or social media content). Although the document does not have the binding power of law, it represents a wake-up call to car companies that have packed modern vehicles with an increasingly distracting set of infotainment features designed to help differentiate one brand from another.
The guidelines will take three years to come into full effect, in an effort to provide engineers with the chance to integrate the recommendations from the technical side of the equation. Several automakers, in earlier discussions of these recommendations, were able to have the wording of the NHTSA document changed to be 'less specific' in order to not specifically limit the length of displayed messages but rather speak to specific types of content that can be shown to the driver. Some companies were concerned that such finely-targeted guidelines could impact the ability to develop navigation and communications systems in the future.
