Will someone please develop an anti-texting-while-driving app?

Texas Street is one of the steepest and longest driving inclines in San Diego, Calif. Cement dividers separate the cars, which also must contend with exhausted riders pushing, rather than peddling, their two wheelers up the narrow and close-to-traffic bike lanes. It's essential that cars keep their lanes. Last night, one next to me didn't, forcing my Toyota Yaris into the bike lane. When I reached the stoplight at the top of the hill, at Madison, and looked over at the driver, she was texting and driving.

Texting while driving is the plague. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Distracted Driving website, distraction accounts for 16 percent of all fatal crashes -- 20 percent for injuries. Cell phones are involved in "18 percent of fatalities in distraction-related crashes." The problem isn't just teens, contrary to popular belief. "Of those drivers reportedly distracted during a fatal crash, the 30-to-39-year-old drivers were the group with the greatest proportion distracted by cell phones."

In the 2007 video above, a teenager sending 5,000 texts a month admits to habitually doing so while driving. The video below is a public service announcement re-enacting an accident while three teen girls text and drive. There are plenty of educational and participatory groups seeking to curb texting while driving, such as "Thumbs Up to X the TXT" Facebook page (from Allstate Insurance).

There are some anti-texting-while driving options available, for example Cellcontrol or iCallSafe. But these options are pricey -- $149.95 for Cellcontrol and $349.95 for iCall Safe iQTeen -- and require specialized equipment or services. There are cheaper software solutions, such as $29.95 Phone Guard, but it only works with some Android or Blackberry mobiles -- not iPhone or Windows Phone 7 handsets. PhonEnforcer is cheaper still -- free to $6.99 -- but it disables the phone (a problem in emergencies) and also doesn't support iPhone or Windows Phone 7 handsets. Another, tXtBlocker, costs $9.99, but like the others is limited in its flexibility. What's most surprising about these solutions: they don't utilize hardware capabilities built into smartphones. They've got purpose for dumphones and feature phones but not the hot Android, iOS or Windows Phone 7 mobiles.

This morning, I searched Apple's App Store for "texting and driving" and "texting, driving." I didn't find any apps to prevent the practice, but I did find one that enables it -- StealthType SMS. Another, DrivePromise, means well, by encouraging the user to enable features that block texting while driving, but it's voluntary. If there is an app that truly prevents texting while driving, and utilizing iPhone's built-in capabilities, I didn't find it. Shouldn't there be an app for that? If you know of one, please educate me and other Betanews readers in comments.

A smartphone with Bluetooth, Compass, GPS, Gyroscope and Proximity Sensor should have all the tools necessary around which to build an anti-texting-while-driving app. I'm no developer, but surely you don't need to be one to conceive of this. The whole point of these capabilities is orientation -- whether that's proximity of the screen to the user's face or spatial plane for games and navigation apps. I can envision many scenarios for using these capabilities. I'll give two.

For cars with Bluetooth, the phone establishes a connection when the driver approaches the car. The software then uses the phone's orientation and touchscreen to determine whether the driver is texting while the car is in motion. Surely something similar could be done without the Bluetooth. If the phone is moving more than 10 miles an hour, as determined by cell tower triangulation, compass and GPS, the touch keyboard is disabled.

The developer(s) would make the app(s) available as parental control software. Additionally, insurance companies could offer safe-driver discounts for people installing and using the software. Surely somebody could do this for profit and public service.

Yesterday's Texas Street incident wasn't the first. In January 2009, where Texas becomes Qualcomm Way, a motorcylce suddenly cut across my lane, moving from the far right two lanes over to make a left-hand turn. I nearly hit the guy. When we got to the light, I looked, and the rider was hunched over a cell phone. He had been texting! While riding a motorcycle!