Teens Develop SMARTwheel to Combat Distracted Driving
Nicole Wakelin
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SMARTwheel: Developed by teens for teens to stop distracted driving.
It’s tough on parents of driving teens, worrying about your kids being distracted when they’re behind the wheel. You can show them what to do and tell them what to do, but you never really know what they’ll actually do when they’re on their own. One group of teens has developed a own device, the SMARTwheel, to help eliminate distracted driving and make us all safer.
The first intelligent steering wheel, the SMARTwheel was developed by a group of young entrepreneur siblings who wanted to find a way to end distracted driving. They’re led by 19-year-old TJ Evarts and they’ve come quite a long way since they first started working on the project at their kitchen table.
The group appeared on Shark Tank and even managed to get an offer! They’ve also met with President Obama who, as Dad to two girls, thought it was a great idea for keeping kids safe. Now the siblings have launched their own Indiegogo campaign to bring the product to the public.
SMARTwheel: Safer roads, saving lives
The device snaps over the wheel of any car. It doesn’t matter if it’s a brand new vehicle loaded with modern safety and technology or one that’s older with no modern features. SMARTwheel works by letting you know through visual and audio alerts built into the device that your hands have been off the wheel for too long.
Sensors in the SMARTwheel can detect your hand position on the wheel and determine if you’re using both hands or just one hand. If you drive one-handed for 3-4 seconds it will alert you that you’re not really focused on the road and need to put both hands back on the wheel and drive.
The data from your teen’s driving habits also goes into an app for your mobile phone so you can see just how often he or she driving unsafely. You even get a grade and can see if your teen is improving over time. The teens hope their invention will both encourage safe driving habits and reduce accidents.
They see the SMARTwheel as something that can continually evolve and provide more and better ways for people to stay focused when they’re driving. To that end, they use open API so any developer can create new application.
We’re so used to worrying about teens being distracted and not thinking about how unsafe they are while driving.
This team of kids proves that teens do know driving distracted is a problem and that they’re actively trying to make us all safer on the road.
