Apple will look after our safety: you will no longer be able to look at your phone while driving if you have iOS 11

Phone distractions while driving are one of the most reckless behaviours at the wheel, and one of the main causes of road accidents worldwide. A few months ago, Apple faced a lawsuit from the Los Angeles Superior Court for not including a blocking feature on its phones that would prevent users from using them while driving.

For this reason, the California company will add the “do not disturb while driving” mode to iPhones running the iOS 11 operating system, a system that will keep drivers from being distracted at the wheel.

This new feature was announced by Craig Federighi (Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering) during the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2017). The “do not disturb” option will be included on devices running the new iOS 11 system update.

If we are a passenger, we can turn off the do not disturb option while driving. The system will use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to detect when we are in a car, automatically locking our phone if we are in one. To detect this condition, the iPhone will analyse signals such as our GPS position, nearby Wi-Fi networks, or whether we are connected to the car via Bluetooth. In this mode, the iPhone will automatically silence notifications and keep the screen dark, but will still allow the use of systems such as hands-free calling or CarPlay.

Users have the option of sending an automatic reply to favourite contacts to let them know they are driving, although they will not be able to reply until they reach their destination.

The system will also detect when we are in a vehicle even if we are not the driver, so an option to turn this feature off will appear on the home screen.

Several websites have questioned the usefulness of this option, arguing that we should be able to avoid using the phone when it poses a risk to driving.