The administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) emphasized the need for safety over bringing more
entertainment into vehicles at the Telematics Detroit 2011 conference
"I’m just putting everyone on notice. A car is not a
mobile device," David Strickland told the Detroit Free Press. "I’m
not in the business of helping people tweet better. I’m not in the business of
helping people post in Facebook better."
While Strickland believes emergency and notification
systems is the kind of technology that helps motorists, he told those companies
that are trying to get a piece of the market for in-vehicle applications,
expected to grow to $2.4 billion in the U.S. alone by 2012, according to the
Detroit Free Press, that they should consider safety over profits.
"A car is a car. There are 250 million of them
driven by people with varying degrees of skill," the NHSTA’s Strickland
said. "We lose 33,000 people a year because of highway crashes, and 995
are attributed to someone with a handheld cell phone."
But the Detroit Free Press reported that automakers,
wireless providers and software developers say voice commands will allow
drivers to utilize new features while keeping both hands on the steering wheel
and eyes on the road.
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