Speech Heads, mark down another tick in the distrubingly thick book of Awful Things That More People Than You Would Think Do While They Drive.

A recently released Vlingo-commissioned study executed by Toluna found that 26 percent of U.S. drivers willingly admit to driving while texting (DWT, Vlingo calls it), despite bans, and despite reports of sickening, face-smashing, hellfire accident reports about hapless souls who texted behind the wheel.

According to l’Agence France-Presse, which reported on the Vlingo study, “Last year, authorities in Los Angeles said the conductor of a train involved in a rail crash that left 25 people dead was sending text messages on his mobile phone during working hours.”

No indication if “during working hours” means while he was supposed to be conducting his train.

The Vlingo study maintains that Tennessee is the worst offender in the Union. A whopping 42 percent of Tennesseans distractedly TXT things to their contacts like lolz! can’t wait to c u 2nite while operating a motor vehicle.

Arizona had the lowest reported incidence with only 18 percent, making them more conscientious drivers or just better liars.

Age-wise, 60 percent of 16 to 19 year-olds admit to DWT, while 49 percent of 20 to 24 year-olds proffered their own confessions. Numbers drop off as age increases. Only 13 percent of respondents in their 50s came forward with admissions of DWT-guilt

The incidence of DWT coincides with an overall rise in text messaging. The study found that two thirds of Americans are now texting, up from a little more than half last year.

Perhaps hypocritically, 83 percent of respondents said that DWT should be illegal—-despite many doing it in places where it is illegal like D.C. (the number for D.C. must be higher than 18 percent according to Vlingo’s findings).

The report goes on to point out that though most people think it should be illegal, it is only illegal in seven states and in one of them, Rhode Island, only for drivers under the age of 18—-a subtextual push for political reform?

It’s not hard to see how these results would favor a company in the business of doing voice-to-text work and voice search work. A total ban on DWT, which exceptions for speech-driven iterations, would be a great boon to the company as well as others like it.

As me, I would just feel safer if there was a ban on my brother Adam B. driving—-speech enabled or not.

The New York Times has an article today about how cars overloaded with portable DVD players and computer keyboards are actually making the roadways considerably more dangerous.

Man. Computers? When I was ten, my parents took me on a thirteen hour roadtrip from California to Utah (Violin camp. Seriously). They played an unabridged audio book of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, which was both entertaining and educational.

According to the NY Times, the biggest causes of driver distraction leading to accidents include dialing phone numbers and texting on wireless devices. Of course, now that everyone has a wireless device, there have been a ton of TV spots advertising Ford’s voice-controlled Sync system (which uses Nuance’s speech rec technology).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1WkTxNb7rY[/youtube]

The article quotes a Ford technical specialist: “Voice interface is sort of the way of the future…Voice dialing is clearly superior to dialing manually.”

Well, great. I wrote a case study about equipping police units with voice controls in the Jan/Feb issue of Speech Tech. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire, who implemented and continue to optimize the project, are also conducting research on how speech recognition influences driving ability. Andrew Kun, an associate professor in UNH’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department describes the dilemma:

So someone gives you a system with a speech recognizer and you’re now supposed to be able to drive a little more safely. But what if the recognizer isn’t very good or just isn’t performing very well? Will that hinder your ability to drive? If the question is that you now have a second task, which is talking to the computer, and it’s not going well because the computer isn’t understanding you, how much does this influence your primary task? By how, I don’t mean what goes on in your heads, I mean what are the result regarding driver performance.

When I spoke with him, they’d only completed a few WOz tests using extreme cases–44 percent and 88 percent recognition rates. As expected, very low recognition rates hindered driving ability and high recognition rates helped it. I don’t know what Sync’s recognition rate is, but I’m pretty sure it’s higher than 44 percent, otherwise I doubt they’d have deployed it.

As Kun admits, “There are a lot of variables that have to be taken into account.”

One is speech recognition rate, the other is what kind of driving do you do? Is a highway more difficult than city driving? Do you have to use the press-to-talk button? We’re trying to come up with a list of things.