No Hands, No Harm

Emily Blue, 25, was driving home from dinner with friends several weeks ago when she decided to call a friend on her Sprint PCS portable cell phone. She was still dialing as she went through an intersection and plowed into a parked Ford Explorer, totaling her own Acura Integra. While suffering only a burnt lip after the air bag exploded in her face, Blue admits to being plenty embarrassed. "I know better than to dial and drive," she insists.

Millions of Americans don't seem to know as much. Driver distraction is a leading suspect in about 1 in 4 of the nation's 6.3 million annual motor-vehicle accidents. The newest attention thieves are collectively known as "telematics," a term that encompasses not only cell phones but also onboard navigational systems and personal digital assistants like Palm Pilots, Blackberries and Handsprings. With an estimated 110 million Americans using cell phones and a growing army of PDA owners fetching their e-mail, stock quotes and news reports anytime, anywhere, there is growing alarm that these devices have collectively become as dangerous as a beer-fed teenager behind the wheel of a muscle car.

Safety concerns and the threat of legislation banning portable gadgets in cars have spurred the automobile and electronics industries to develop driver-friendly onboard systems that are now being promoted as safety features. Earlier this year, General Motors began selling Virtual Advisor, a hands-free, voice-activated system that allows drivers to make phone calls, access e-mail and get news, sports and stock quotes--all simply by pressing a button and talking to the dashboard.

Virtual Advisor--available by year's end in 32 of GM's 54 cars (as well as some Lexus, Acura and Saab models)--is an extension of GM's OnStar system, which when introduced in 1996 was touted mostly as a luxury option for drivers who could use it to get directions, make restaurant reservations and buy theater tickets over a speakerphone from the comfort of their Cadillacs. This year the selling point is safety first; the pampering will cost you extra.

By combining global-positioning-satellite technology with a hands-free connection to teams of actual human advisers, OnStar provides a range of services, starting with a basic safety option that for $199 a year gives drivers the comfort of knowing that Big Brother OnStar is up there watching: advisers are alerted and call in assistance when the air bags of an OnStar-equipped car deploy. They can also unlock doors when keys get lost, diagnose engine problems or even find a stolen car. Last fall an OnStar adviser tracked a GMC Yukon stolen from a Battle Creek, Mich., dealership, enabling police to arrest four men within 10 minutes of the call to OnStar requesting help.

What Virtual Advisor adds is wireless, voice-prompted phone service and Internet access to a customized menu of news, sports and stock portfolios. Just say the word stocks, news or weather--or the word dial when you want to place a call--and the onboard computer fetches. Access is limited (you can't get AOL, for example), and there's a lag in news and sports scores, because they are first read into the system by real people. E-mail, on the other hand, is instantly "verbalized" using text-to-speech software that recites your mail in that eerie, intonation-free televoice. Phone charges range from 19[cents] to a buck a minute, depending on how big a block of time you buy.

Other automakers offer similar systems, but none so far that are fully voice activated. Still, they are moving in that direction. Mercedes says its OnStar-like Command feature is available hands-free. BMW has announced a customized, hands-free, digital version of Motorola's new TimePort. BMW plans to introduce iDrive, a console panel that will house Internet and e-mail software as well as hands-free phone service. In 2002 Ford hopes to install its own service, called Wingcast.

The much touted safety benefit of these gizmos comes solely from not having to use your hands or eyes to operate them. Yet research suggests that even with your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, the "cognitive" distraction of simply concentrating on something other than driving can get you into trouble. "The average driver does not have the training to process all this information safely while en route," argues Barry Kantrowitz, who directs the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

Soon enough, GM owners will have the power to do more than just access information. Last week the company announced that, come summer, its Virtually-Advised drivers will be able not only to monitor their stock holdings but also through Fidelity Investments make actual hands-free trades while attempting to negotiate traffic. They may thus be able to dodge a market sell-off by unloading shares on the fly and at the same time stay focused enough to avoid a real crash--say, into the car up ahead.