Cellphone jammers seem to be becoming more common these days. From Brando’s personal device that makes you a walking dead spot to Japan’s use of them at ATM’s to fight fraud, they’re popping up everywhere. Well here’s another novel use for the technology and it may actually save you money. Called the Key2SafeDriving (K2SD), it is a product being developed by University of Utah engineers to stop teen drivers from talking or sending text messages on their cellphone whilst driving.
When the key is extended from its housing, it is in driving mode and will block any calls or messages to or from a paired phone within the immediate vicinity. It uses either Bluetooth or RFID to communicate with the paired phone, shows a stop sign on the phone’s screen when active and has an auto-responder to reply to incoming text messages.
The invention has received provisional patents and has been licensed to a private company that hopes to release the device for sale within six months at under $50 per key – plus monthly sub.
The K2SD could not only help to prevent crashes and save lives, but also save you money as the use of the device could reduce your car insurance premium. They hope to gain insurance industry backing and use the device to compile an individual “safety score” for each policy holder, which effectively lowers the policy cost the more you use the device.
Check out the video below to see the device in action, but I must warn you, it is painfully tacky.
Sources:
Key2SafeDriving and Physorg
Via: SlashGear