Amongst Apple’s announcements during their WWDC was an interesting “Do Not Disturb While Driving” function for IOS 11.
You tell yourself that you won’t use your phone while driving, ever, but the next day you do it anyways. We’re creatures of habit and we get easily distracted so it’s understandable. If you’re still struggling to break this awful habit, Apple newest “Do Not Disturb While Driving” function aims to keep you on the straight and narrow and will let your friends know that you’re piloting two tons of metal down the road for you.
iOS11 will include a cool ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature while driving.. knows your driving suggests turning on blocking notifications #wwdc2017 pic.twitter.com/KWFkQVNbKt
— gabe slate (@gabeslate) June 5, 2017
If you turn on this features once you update to iOS 11 or use an iOS 11 enabled device, your iPhone will know you’re driving. We assume that means you’ll have to have your data running so Apple can detect when your phones moving pattern matches that of a moving vehicle. According to TheNextWeb, If you do try to use your phone, you’ll be met with a black screen and if anyone tries to contact you, they’ll be met with a message saying your phone is on DNDWD. By typing the word “urgent,” messages can still get through.
If you’re riding shotgun, you’ll be able to tell iOS 11 that you’re not driving and can use your phone as you normally would.
Distracted driving isn’t anything new and has been an unfortunate cause for accidents and fatalities since the dawn of the automobile. We’re pretty sure there’s a record somewhere of some chap crashing his Model T into a ditch because he was fiddling around with his timing stalk. But since smartphones are always readily at hand, a new source of distraction has increased accidents and fatalities to record amounts.
While this function will help lots of drivers out there, it’ll still be up to the iPhone user to turn the function on and avoid overriding it. If you do text your friend and see that this function is turned on, do your part and hopefully don’t abuse the “Urgent” override unless it’s a real emergency.
Kudos to Apple for including this update to iOS 11. We just hope it came out a bit sooner.
