Control Center

Come January driving and talking on a phone will be illegal in Illinois.

It would be nice to be able to go to the control center and click on a car icon that would be similar to the airplane mode, but automatically responds to any incoming call or text in the appropriate manner. And maybe even to have specific responses set up for certain contacts. For example if my girlfriend calls me from home she would get a message saying I'm driving now and can't talk but I'll give her a big smooch when I see her. If a client calls he/she would receive a different message. Texts could be customized as well.

It seems to me with technology the way it is this idea would be fairly easy to implement and very useful. I think people would use it if it were available.
This feature might even help people who are addicted to texting while driving to set it aside for a bit and make the roads safer for those of us who aren't so dexterous.

I hope someone from Apple will see this and consider it. I wouldn't want an app for this, I'd much rather see it in the control center.

Come January driving and talking on a phone will be illegal in Illinois.

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It'll be interesting to see how Illinois is going to enforce this. There are states where texting and driving are likewise illegal but again almost impossible to enforce. Perhaps Apple will incorporate your idea in the next series of iPhones.

BTW, doesn't the law in Illinois say it's OK to use a speaker and remote device, in other words, something that will hold the phone and allow you to voice activate it to answer and talk?

chscag said:

BTW, doesn't the law in Illinois say it's OK to use a speaker and remote device, in other words, something that will hold the phone and allow you to voice activate it to answer and talk?

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That is the case right now in Chicago but I think the new law says you can't talk on the phone while driving, hands free or not. That is what I remember reading in the paper a while back.

As far as enforcement goes the police have occasionally positioned themselves at on-ramps and in a two hour period ticketed a lot of people for distracted driving (texting) and one guy for shaving.

Back to my original desire. Apple is good at making the user experience of their products easier and better. To let people know why I'm not answering my phone at a particular time of day is better than just using a generic voice mail outgoing message. I would like to tailor them for different uses.

Maybe there's an app for that.

I like the idea, though and it sounds very plausible. In iOS 7 you can make custom reply messages instead of answering a phone call (but you have to manually select one to send when the phone rings), and you can turn on Do Not Disturb. But to incorporate those two functions into one would be quite handy.

I sent the idea to Apple.

If it gets more people to stop using their phones while driving...

Tough luck if your messages got mixed up and the client got the smooch!