The goal of the CDMS was to provide feedback to teen drivers and institute vehicle adaptations to
allied subsystems (e.g., reducing feedback thresholds for speeding) if cell phone use was detected.
This was intended to be a central feature of the STC to manage a known risk for teen drivers due to
cell phone use, but preliminary pilot testing revealed that the available cell phone use detection
technology proved to be unusable for the full STC evaluation due to poor reliability and accuracy.
Furthermore, adequate technology is still unavailable commercially due to continued technological
limitations. This is unfortunate as cell phone use (and texting) continues to be a significant safety
concern for all drivers, but especially teen drivers.
The significant risk associated with cell phone use would support the contention that the inclusion
of any detection technology might be warranted. However, based on teen and parent feedback
within the pilot work conducted as part of this project, a poorly performing detection subsystem
would be perceived as a significant annoyance and would negatively impact perceptions of the other
subsystems. The result would be that teens and parents view the entire STC negatively and would
prefer not to use the system. This would deny teens the benefits of the other useful subsystems. In
light of this we recommend that a CDMS not be included in STC designs at this time. Instead,
substantial effort should be dedicated to improving the accuracy and reliability of this technology