Cell phones are one of the top causes for car crashes every year. For many years cell phone conversations have been the culprit for dangerous driving and automobile collisions and in the past few years texting has only made matters worse. In many states and cities around the US, texting or talking with a cell phone to your ear while driving are illegal and can lead to some serious fines if you are caught. Many consumer advocate groups have started small activist groups in order to curb the trend of dangerous cell phone usage and driving, such as the “Hang Up and Drive” campaign.
Some Android app developers, however, want to help cell phone users to be more responsible with their cell phone usage on the road and have created apps that will actually make you a safer driver instead of a more reckless one while using your smart phone.
The app called Safe Drive Free is one such Android app that attempts to help smart phone users avoid car crashes. If your car includes an Android docking device, the app will read information from your car while docked into your car’s dashboard. If you do not have a smart phone docking station on your car, the Safe Drive Free app will still work but will require manual set up of many of the features.
Features
For users with a car dock, the Safe Drive Free app will automatically detect when you are driving and become active. While the app will automatically look to see if you are driving, users without a car dock can easily switch to Manual mode to enable features themselves. When the Safe Drive Free app is docked, it can automatically monitor your speed and give you voice prompts when you are going too fast that tell you to slow down. When docked, the app does not utilize any GPS positioning features or wifi, which helps enable efficient battery charging by hooking into your car’s own GPS capabilities.
The app can be enabled to automatically send your calls to your voice mail while you are in driving mode. You can also enable the app to automatically reply to mobile callers who have texting enabled with a pre defined SMS message to let your callers know that you are currently driving, but will return their call when you are in a place where you can safely do so. If you receive any text messages while you are driving, Safe Drive Free can also be configured to automatically reply with a similar SMS message to let your contacts know you will respond to them shortly. These SMS messages can be archived later by the Safe Drive Free app to let you know who you sent reply messages to.
New features that the developers of Safe Drive Free are currently working on include automatic replies to emails. Email is becoming increasingly more popular as smart phones allow you to utilize all of your email apps as easily as you phone’s SMS text functionality, so this is a nice future capability to look forward to. Also, the development team is working on a feature that will automatically use a voice read back feature on your emails and SMS text messages so you can hear your messages while you drive instead of having to read them.
In order to support the free aspect of Safe Drive Free, the app is sponsored by advertisements. Upon installing the app, Safe Drive Free will install a search button on your home screen that can be removed by the user if it is unwanted.
Author Bio: Michael Clark shared this post. He is a continuous blogger and a content writer. He is very passionate about new cars and bikes; he usually gives his vehicles for repairing at Gili’s Autobody shop.