Calgary police have put their support behind a new app that hopes to reduce driver distractions by using GPS technology to handle incoming correspondence while you’re behind the wheel.
One Tap was launched at Calgary’s police headquarters on Wednesday and promises to manage your life while you focus on the road.
The app was invented in Calgary by AppColony.
“What was critical to us as we started engaging in this discovery is that we found it wasn’t really the phone. All of you have a phone, all of you have an on/off button, all of you have a trunk, all of you have an airplane mode, so when you get in a car, you have your own app already, It’s very simple to eliminate distracted driving, turn your phone off. Put it in airplane mode. Put it in your trunk. Clearly that wasn’t happening, distracted driving accidents, distracted driving incidents were on the rise,” said Ted Hellard, founder of AppColony. “It is the addiction to the phone that is the actual issue and the actual problem, the connectivity.”
One Tap detects when you’re driving and manages your alerts and responds automatically to calls and texts letting people know you are behind the wheel.
You can also set the app to turn on manually and set the drive time to let people know when they can expect your return call.
The driving app notifies the user about urgent messages and can also help monitor your children’s driving habits.
It turns itself off when your trip is done and gives a quick summary of events when you reach your destination.
The program also allows you to use the phone regularly if you’re a passenger in someone else’s vehicle.
One Tap provides the user with some interesting driver data, like keeping a total count of the distractions it prevents and it also adds your safety statistics to its user base.
Recent data shows that at least one of the drivers involved in 80 percent of the 5 million car crashes in North America was distracted behind the wheel when the collision occurred.
Click HERE for more information and to download the app.
