If you must drive and use your phone, at least get an app like Kruzr

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

This is the networked age. Whether it’s a business client’s call that just can’t be ignored, or a call from family, friend, or acquaintance that keeps you glued to your phone while you weave through traffic and potholes, or maybe it’s you who needs to make a call, use your GPS to navigate, check or text an important message, or just to change the music – people driving and using phones simultaneously is a ubiquitous sight.

But, as we all know yet tend to ignore, driving and using mobiles at the same time can be perilous. Did you know that using your cell phone while driving shoots up your risk of crashing by 23 times? Here’s more scary stats: road accidents kill about 1.2 million people a year globally, while 2.5 million are seriously injured. In India alone, road accidents claim about 200,000 lives each year. And 20 to 30 percent of these accidents are directly linked to mobile phone usage. In fact, using mobile phones while driving has overtaken drunk driving as one of the topmost road safety hazards!

But despite those dire warnings, if you must use your phone while driving, here’s some help at hand – an app that promises to make it less unsafe. It’s called Kruzr. With this app installed, you have a safety net in your phone, so says Pallav Singh, co-founder and CEO of Kruzr.

How Kruzr works

Software developer Ashish Shukla snd Kruzr co-founders Dinesh Fatehpuria and Pallav Singh.

Here’s how Kruzr works: every time you start driving, the app starts automatically, allowing only important calls to get through. The caller is informed that you are driving and given the option to either press 1 and talk if he or she thinks it’s important, or 2 to leave a voice message. Notifications from SMS, email, WhatsApp, and so on are hidden, and displayed only after the app automatically determines your drive is completed.

Kruzr also has a “Drive Mode” feature which is handy when it is you who may need to use your phone while driving – to make a call, navigate, or change the music. It gives you easy access to various apps you may need, such as maps, music player, and so on – all of it accessible through a single interface, the whole idea being to minimize drivers having to take their eyes off the road while driving.

Which is primarily what concerns Pallav, hence gave him and the Kruzr team the impetus to develop the app. “It makes me angry when I see someone driving and chatting on the phone, and yet, sometimes it is we ourselves who do it, despite being aware of the danger,” says Pallav.

Indeed! On my morning walk today I saw a man, in his early thirties, astride his scooter, right hand on the bike’s handle, his left hand holding his mobile at his ear, engrossed in conversation, his eyes tilted sideways towards his phone. So his eyes and mind were primarily focused on his phone conversation, with only peripheral attention on the road. Using the mobile phone while driving has become so commonplace that it hardly registers how dicey it actually is, hence most of us are too desensitized to get angry, or even concerned, when we see others doing it, or when we do it ourselves.

Being a driving and motor enthusiast, Pallav is also passionate about solving society’s critical problems by building technology solutions. He and his team, Dinesh Fatehpuria, co-founder and CTO, and Ashish Shukla, software developer, thus conceived of Kruzr, using mobile technology to improve road safety.

A mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Bombay, Pallav worked as a renewable energy consultant for over four years before founding Kruzr. Dinesh has over five years’ experience as an enterprise mobile applications architect. And Ashish is Kruzr’s Android specialist. A common interest in mobile tech and tackling societal problems brought them together.

Did you know you have “inattention blindness”?

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Cut down accidents by 25 percent

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