Nuance Communications hosted this week a competition revealing that voice commands decrease the risk of driver distractions which appear when using mobile phones in cars. The competition, named "The Amazing Race: Distracted Driving", was held in Boca Raton, Florida, at Conversations Mobile, an important speech event for the mobile industry.

The competition provided a simulated driving environment in which contestants with mobile phones competed against a driver equipped with Nuance speech solutions. During the test, drivers were asked to complete different tasks that represent typical distractions for today's driving: send a text message, find a local business and play a specific MP3 music. The race was not about speed, but about minimizing distractions to assure a safe drive. For each of the challenges given, the drivers using cell phones virtually crashed several times without completing the tasks right, while the driver using Nuance speech solutions completed the tasks successfully without a single incident.

"Today, a serious traffic-safety issue is DWT: Driving While Texting," said Steve Chambers, president, mobile and consumer services division at Nuance. "Over a trillion messages were sent worldwide last year, and the number of text messages is expected to explode to two trillion in 2008. Increasingly, these messages are sent by drivers who put themselves and others at risk by taking their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel to manually enter text on their cell phone keypad. In fact, the number one killer of American teens on the road today isn't alcohol-related accidents; it's distracted driving with over 45 percent of teens reading or sending messages while driving. Nuance believes the safest option is for drivers to simply refrain from using a phone while driving, but for those who insist on using their devices, our competition showed that the hands-free, eyes-free option provided by speech is the next best alternative."

Nuance Communications offers consumers the chance to control mobile phones (create messages, access information) by voice and advanced text input, as a solution to overcome the constrains that tiny screens and small keyboards come with. The speech solution from Nuance provides eyes-free and hands-free access to mobile devices and auto entertainment systems that represent a constant distraction for drivers.