Researchers at the Anna University of Technology in Chennai, India have prototyped another system to prevent drivers from using their mobile phones when driving.

According to articles about the research at Smithsonian and Phys.Org, the system detects when a car is in motion and then uses a “jammer” to block the driver’s cell phone signal but not the passenger. It’s not entirely clear to me how that’s possible (unless the phone is tethered to the device), and unfortunately the full research paper is only for paid subscribers of the International Journal of Enterprise Network Management

. Not only does their system limit use, it reportedly also employs RFID to “transmit the vehicle number plate information stored in RFID tag to RFID reader buffer, when driver use of cell phone was detected. Data collected from the reader will be transmitted from car and displayed at traffic signal post containing LCD so that police can take legislative action against the driver.” Of course, if the jammer actually works, that entire part of the system would be unnecessary.

Yeah, so… I’m a bit unclear on the details of this. But the tl;dr is, don’t be distracted by your mobile phone when you’re driving. “Technology to prevent mobile phone accidents”

source: http://www.boingboing.net / by David Pescovitz / Monday, July 09th, 2012