Distracted driving is often prompted by phone notifications

December 24, 2019, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

It is hard to ignore you phone when it is pushing notifications your way. It’s even harder to ignore the phone when you are driving and the thing keeps ringing, beeping and vibrating. The temptation to peek can be irresistible. We know that using a phone while driving to talk or text (let’s not consider scroll through feeds) increases accident rates greatly. Every time you look at your phone you take your eyes and attention off the road.

Some people put their phones out of reach, others put them on airplane mode, and some put them in the trunk. The reality is that most of us just keep our phone in our pocket or on the seat or console beside us. Most of us don’t take the extra step to turn off all notifications while driving. iPhones added a new feature this last year which may help with the temptation issue.

The new feature called “Do Not Disturb While Driving” can be activated in the setting of the phone just once. When it is on:

“text messages and other notifications are silenced or limited. You can ask Siri to read replies to you, so you don’t have to look at your iPhone. Incoming calls are allowed only when iPhone is connected to CarPlay—a car Bluetooth system—or a hands-free accessory, or when you use Do Not Disturb settings to allow some calls.”

The phone senses when you are in a moving vehicle and automatically activates. If you are a passenger you simply override the setting once and you can continue to text, call, navigate, scroll and play games.

When some one tries to contact you your phone will send an auto-reply to anyone trying to text or call you. You can change the message that is being sent, and you can customize the settings to allow certain calls to break through at anytime. If someone gets your auto-reply message and replies with “Urgent” all subsequent texts are allowed from that person on this drive.

Phone calls are handled in a similar way. If you don’t have Bluetooth or CarPlay you can set your settings to allow anyone that calls you twice in 3 minutes to break through.

This is a good start to eliminating the problems caused by the temptation to use your phone. If you cannot hear it going off, you are less likely to use it.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

It is important that you review your accident benefit file with one of our experienced personal injury / car accident lawyers to ensure that you obtain access to all your benefits which include, but are limited to, things like physiotherapy, income replacement benefits, vocational retraining and home modifications.