Texting while driving has led people to prison because they’ve not been paying attention to the road ahead and caused an accident. On many cars, if your phone is bluetooth-paired, you can read an incoming message on the dashboard screen. Mercedes’ COMAND system has offered this function for years. But to date no new car has permitted you to reply, for what Mercedes called “obvious reasons” when I spoke to them about it. In short, it doesn’t think it’s safe. But all that is about to change, and the car in question isn’t some high-end model from a German brand. It’s the new Toyota Yaris. Driving it yesterday, it has a multimedia system called Touch & Go and you can reply to texts. You can either input the characters individually or use templates that you have set up earlier, eg, “I’m driving now, will reply later”. What came as a surprise to me is that the Yaris allows you to do this while the car is moving. Interesting to see how that plays out. Not convinced it’s a good thing.
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