This year, AT&T started their "It Can Wait" campaign to attempt to knock out texting while driving. The campaign encourages drivers to tweet/text/Facebook #X before they start driving to let people know to not text or call them until they arrive to their destination.
AT&T is doing everything they can to make #X catch on. They've gotten several celebrities to join them in this fight including Demi Lovato and Pete Wentz. Having high profile people tweet and explain what #X is has been a large part of getting this campaign more attention. AT&T also created an app called DriveMode. So how does this app work? Basically, if you're driving, and you go over 25mph, your phone will not receive texts, emails, or phone calls. The only problem with this app is that it's only available to AT&T Android or Blackberry users. It isn't compatible with IOS, which I'm sure is a very large portion of smartphone users. So for iPhone users (or people who didn't download the app), the idea is that you should send #X over social media or text it to your friend before you drive. This is a great idea as long as people happen to look at Twitter or Facebook after you send that out or you remember to text your friend before you start driving. If your followers don't happen to see your tweet or Facebook post or you forget to text your friend, then #X is pretty useless because most likely you'll get at least one text while you're behind the wheel. Hopefully you'll wait to look at it, but it's still very tempting.
AT&T is doing a good job of at least getting people to talk about the problem of texting while driving, but how could they make this campaign better? First on all, I think they need to make their DriveMode app available for IOS users. If I could get the app on my iPhone, I probably would because honestly it's hard for me to not look at a text while I'm in my car when I see it pop up on my phone. Secondly, they need to make their celebrity endorses less obvious, if that makes sense. To me it's very clear that they aren't tweeting their support for free so it all seems a bit phony. It comes off as a way to just get more attention for AT&T as opposed to genuinely trying to combat texting while driving.
What do you think? Will #X become "a thing" soon?
I think this is a great campaign. However, the people who will do this are probably the people who have already been using safety precautions in using their phone while driving. AT&T is doing a great job at the campaign though, and I hope it helps bring about awareness of the dangers of being distracted while driving!
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