Transportation Secretary Expects To Use Technology to Ban Mobile Phone Usage in Cars
Excuse me while I get a little ranty.
This article is absurd and if it is true the Transportation Secretary is absurd. Legislating away a problem is so much less beneficial to industry than helping the industry come up with solutions to solve a problem. Take this case for instance there are two solutions.
Either you can make tech that bans mobile phone usage in cars for all people.
Or you create a car that avoids the problem all together.
I'm a stanch advocate for the second option. For the past few months I've been thinking about the way that cars work and how the experience can be improved. I'm not saying these solutions are perfect but it's worth a shot for me to throw them out on the internet. The issue is going back to what a car is fundamentally. One of the biggest wastes of time is driving in the car with no ability to be productive. People waste millions of hours in a car and there is nothing to do, hence why they get on their cell phones.
What if cars could drive themselves and were equipped with Wi-Fi and power outlets. While your car drives you to work, class or some far away destination you could be writing things down, browsing the internet or even talking on your phone. I think that people are looking at the wrong kind of solution for the situation that drivers face right now.
It's a root/branch solution conundrum. We learned about this in my intro to politics class (guess college does come in handy sometimes) a branch solution is where you build a new system on top of the one you have that might not be working right now, blocking cell phones. A root solution is going all the way back to the start and rethinking the intent of the entire system. Why do people need to be driving their cars if we have the technology for them not to. The single biggest reason for collisions is not cell phones, it's human error. You take that out of the equation and there are much safer roads, not to mention more productive people.
What we need for road safety is definitely a root solution but unless the government gets behind an Idea like this it's simply not going to happen. Which sucks because there are so many cool things that could be made here and revitalize American industry. But people are content making branch decisions that slowly keep institutions in place instead of root decisions that make real advancements.
This doesn't have to apply exclusively to cars but can also work for advertising. Sometimes the best idea isn't looking at what a company has done but looking at what they've never done before. When you go back looking for root solutions they can make a lot of sense and are worth investigating. All it takes is a little more faith and a little more lateral thinking, which is part of the reason you got into advertising.
If you think I'm an idiot please tell me in the comment box below.
Thanks @mtlb for the link.
EDIT:Here's a comment from that article that also summs up the issue nicely. Thanks to Bill Silverstien "We should ban passengers in cars because passengers can distract drivers. We should ban putting items on the car seat because if you stop sharply, the items can move and that would distract the driver. We should ban car horns because someone blowing a horn can distract other drivers. We should ban sirens on emergency vehicles because the sirens would distract drivers from the road in front of them. We should ban dihydrogenmonoxide because it can distract drivers when it spills inside the car, when it gets splashed on cars, etc. (I'm ignoring that it is a major component of acid raid and that it is found in a high percentage of cancer cells.)" At what point do you stop thinking inside the system and start rethinking the system?