Texting is a relatively new first world problem with a staggering 2/3 of all drivers under 25 years of age and 1/3 of all Australian drivers admitting that they text and drive.

I say relatively new because texting for most people only began 8 years ago with the huge uptake in smart phones brought on by the iPhone, prior to which most people didn’t even know what texting was or where to find it on their Nokia mobile phone.

This new scourge has caused governments around the world to ban texting whilst driving and to spend millions on advertising and education campaigns to convince us not to do it and punish us if we do.

A new device called Groove, that slots into the port just below the drivers steering wheel and blocks all of the drivers calls and texts from coming in is to be launched in Australia and this new tech triggered Phil Whelan of Honk Kong Radio 3 to want to chat about this phenomenon and what else is happening in this space.

This new gadget is a hardware always on solution to the problem, but there are many apps and alternate devices that also do this, some of these apps include Live2Txt, Canary, DriveSafe.ly which require you to start the app before you drive off and turn it off when you’ve arrived and apps like textecution that automatically start when you are moving faster than 30 kms (but you better remember to turn it off when your on the bus or train or a passenger in a car).

These are all great tech solutions to the new problems, but there is a really low tech solution that costs no money and is always available and it’s remembering to turn the phone off yourself or putting it into Do Not Disturb or Airplane mode whenever you’re driving.

Increasingly I’m getting frustrated by the huge appetite to solve every tech problems with a tech solution when sometimes just good old fashioned human actions can achieve the same thing.

And besides when we get to 2035 and beyond our self driving, fully connected, intelligent cars, roads and cities will require no speed cameras, traffic lights or infringement officers and fines, because the car will not allow itself to break any laws and traffic flows will be dynamic allowing every car an express lane ride to wherever their car is taking them – well that’s the theory anyway?!

So have a listen to the segment now and then let me know your thoughts on the driving and texting and the roads of tomorrow