Enlisting America's best and brightest to make roadways safer for everyone

Today, I'm pleased to help the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launch its Transportation and Energy Distinguished Lecture Series.

 

Touring fleet of electric cars with MIT's Electric Vehicle Team, photo courtesy L. Barry Hetherington
From left to right, Stephen Zoepf, me, Lennon Rodgers, and Radu Gogoana

The Obama Administration has a number of transportation-related problems we would love to have MIT students and faculty help us solve, and today I'll call upon the Transportation@MIT community to:

• Build a car that doesn’t crash
• Design a vehicle that emits zero greenhouse gasses
• Engineer a green revolution that changes the ways we generate and consume energy--and that powers a new century of economic growth.
  

But I'm particularly keen on using their talent to solve one more problem: distracted driving.

Click on the image above to watch my interview with Gayle King last Friday on The Oprah Winfrey Show

Readers of this blog know this is one issue I am passionate about; you know that I even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show last Friday. But it's not until you read the posts on my Facebook wall that you begin to understand the devastating human cost of this deadly behavior.

Week after week family and friends of victims have been posting the stories of their tragic losses. And, as many of you know, these stories are truly heartrending.

If you watched Oprah on Friday, for example, you saw Jacy Good of Pennsylvania tell the story of her crushing injuries and the loss of her mother and her father in one moment. Because a driver was distracted. Jacy was on the verge of tears, Oprah was on the verge of tears, and in DC's Newseum where I participated in one of Oprah's viewing rallies, many in the crowd could not fight off their tears.

Well, my Facebook wall is all-too-full of similar sad narratives.

These horrible losses are 100% preventable; this has to stop.

And that's why today I'm appealing to the MIT community, among America's best and brightest, for help. I'm asking them to use their prodigious research skills to help us end this epidemic through three different avenues:

• Education--How can we best communicate the dangers of this practice to drivers? How can MIT's expertise in new media guide our outreach to target groups?
• Enforcement--Police officers tell us it's difficult to detect whether someone is texting while driving. Can MIT engineers help devise roadside methods of discovering a driver who is playing with electronics rather than focusing on the road?
• Technology--Can MIT researchers develop an app that blocks a driver's distracting devices without blocking the cell phones of passengers?

We are building momentum to make distracted driving disappear.

We've got Oprah; we've got Allstate; we've got the NOYS/NRSF Drive to Life PSA contest; we've got distraction.gov; and we've got a Secretary of Transportation who is on a rampage.

Today, we're adding Transportation@MIT.

We're going to beat this thing. We are. We can't afford not to.

Comments

[Biketowns]

Ray you gotta see this

http://yehudamoon.com/index.php?date=2010-05-02

[Michael E. Bailey]

MIT is one of the top 10 schools in the country. If any one can come up with something that will make a driver's cell phone non-functional while they are driving the car, MIT is the one who can. That is something we badly need. Also as the situation in the Gulf of Mexico is showing, we need to develop new technologies that will be powered by hydrogen or all-electric power so we can be rid of the environmental problems caused by dirty technology from the last century. We could use solar power to manufacture the hydrogen and solar power to recharge the batteries on all-electric powered vehicles. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.

[Winnie Wang]

Hi Mr.Secretary, I have been in your talk at MIT and I agree with you on solving this problem through Technology, Education and Enforcement! As a graduate student majoring at Public Transit at MIT, I feel the obligation and responsibility to build more sustainable and safer transportation systems! Thank you for the talk and motivations!

[Leigh Gilly]

The application exists today. It is called cellcontrol.
www.cellcontrol.com
It can block only the phone of the driver and allow passenger phones to be left in normal working mode.

[Chris Zegras]

Dear Mr. Secretary,

It was a pleasure having the chance to speak with you during your visit to MIT and to listen to your interesting address to our community. Your leadership on safe driving in an increasingly distracted world is impressive and I'm sure that MIT can make an important contribution.

For a few additional words on what MIT can bring to bear on the pressing metropolitan-level transportation challenges of this early Century, feel free to have a look here: http://web.mit.edu/czegras/www/Zegras%20Notes%20for%20LaHood%20Meeting.htm

[jeremy chalmers]

Mr. Secretary
You do not need MIT. As I have previously written Trinity-Noble LLC holds a patent for an intentional radiator that accomplishes everything you are seeking in a free market solution.
I can't begin to explain how frustrating it is to scream and scream with no response or acknowledgment.
Please have someone on your staff visit http://www.trinitynoble.com/ga_vp.html

[Steve]

This company, Trinity-Noble, had been proposing a similar technology:

http://www.trinitynoble.com/

[Tarik]

I am not convincied that "cell control" is the answer.
GetVext provides a solution that allows access to email, SMS, and more…without typing. It is all done by voice at any time on any mobile device including BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian , Android, and ALL PRE-PAID phones etc. One can listen to, compose, reply and forward email all by voice – hands-free and eyes up safely while driving, or any other time.

[Carroll]

Technology is great...but who is going to pay to put this technology in every car that is on the road today.

You are only going to find out about the distracted driver after the fact. So make laws that have teeth.

If you cause an accident...automatic 25 years in prison.
If someone is killed....automatic life in prison...no parole.

That ought to get people's attention....