New Apps Could Keep Drivers in Touch – And Out of Harm’s Way

“There’s an app for that,” or so said the salesman offering a customer his first smartphone. With the Apple Store alone listing something north of 1 million apps, that’s pretty close to true for anything you might want, and Google not far behind for its Android system.

Manufacturers are now racing to integrate smartphone apps into the very core of their in-car entertainment systems with the likes of Ford’s Sync 3, Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto. In turn, software writers are looking for ways to come up with more creative apps to appeal to motorists.

A growing number of options are out there, including the wildly popular Waze, which can help drivers shift their routes to avoid traffic jams. But several others are under development that could allow you to modify your route for other reasons – including the ability to stay in touch, and to avoid bad drivers.

Israeli tech firm Nexar is developing one program that would use the camera of your iPhone to constantly monitor traffic around your vehicle. It would capture the license plate of vehicles passing by and compare them to a database of “bad drivers.”

Nexar CEO Eran Shir recently revealed a prototype during the annual Code Conference, in California, claiming that his company has more than 500 billion hours per year of driving data.

If a user were to spot someone driving erratically or, say, demonstrating road rage, they would simply tap the screen of their iPhone to identify that person as a bad driver. Meanwhile, the app would also notify you if someone listed in the database were driving nearby.

The idea is to identify road risks and let good drivers steer clear. Of course, the proposed service does raise some questions about privacy, among other things. It could, for example, let someone prone to speeding click the app every time they get stuck behind a driver who believes in speed limits.

Longer-term, would such a database be tapped into by the police — or by insurance companies looking for ever better ways to identify and penalize risky motorists?

During the conference, well-known tech writer and moderator Walter Mossberg joked that Nexar’s app could become, “an outrageous invasion of the privacy of bad drivers.”