Zero-configuration Alarms: Towards Reducing Distracting Smartphone Interactions while Driving

Abstract

The rising ubiquity of smartphones for navigation, driver mode, etc., has increased their use significantly among drivers; however, there are growing numbers of road fatalities being reported due to distractions from the phone while driving. In contrast to the existing solutions that use a camera or other communication media on the car or need external setups, this paper proposes a solution called ZeCA , where the smartphone itself can identify in real-time with zero pre-configurations whether its user is driving while engaging in a high-distraction interaction with the phone. ZeCA runs as a smartphone background service and generates audio-visual alerts when the phone can distract the driver. A thorough evaluation and usability study of ZeCA with 50 different models of vehicles driven by 70 drivers over 5 countries indicates that the proposed solution can infer distracting smartphone interactions with \(\gt 80\% \) accuracy and a \(70\% \) reduction in smartphone usage during driving.