Texting & Driving Soon to be Under the Radar Gun

It had to come eventually. Now it's almost here. There's a company working on a new device to sell police forces across the country that not only measures whether you're speeding but also can tell if you're texting too.

Yup, big brother is getting more invasive by the minute. Welcome to the future. ComSonics, based in Harrisonburg, Va., makes handheld devices for cable companies to detect when you're stealing cable from a neighbor. They also make radar detectors for the police. Well, guess what? They've put their two specialized fields of expertise together into making a nice little hand-held device so police can spot you driving merrily along, weaving in and out of traffic, holding your smartphone and the steering wheel in one hand while typing out love notes to your girlfriend with the other. It looks and works just like a radar gun, but has text sniffing technology.  

The gadgets ComSonics normally sells to cable companies detect signal leaks. These occur when your wiring is put in wrong or gets eaten away by underground pests. Cable companies use them to spot exactly where digital data is leaking so that their repair crews can dig the cable up and replace it.

Now they've figured out a way to shift their expertise from the cable devices to spot digital data when it leaks out into the electronic universe when you send text messages. They figure that putting this electronics into their radar guns will prove to be highly popular in states where it's illegal to text and drive at the same time.

Even though the technology is relatively simple and straightforward, ComSonics says they still have a few kinks left to work out so the new radar/texting gun will work in the real world. As an example, if someone else in the car besides the driver is texting, right now the device can't tell whether it's the driver or not. We certainly wouldn't want to accuse the wrong person of texting if he wasn't actually driving the car, even if the car was going 80 mph in a 45 zone and weaving all over the place. Just a speeding and reckless driving ticket, thank you. At least for now.

But the company is determined to more accurately pinpoint who's texting and who's not pretty soon, so consider yourself warned. Big Brother is coming.