More than just once or twice we’ve heard of our friend’s cousin’s neighbour getting mugged by a taxi driver. Or how our dad’s business partner’s daughter’s friend walked home one night and was followed by someone. All scary stuff, and there’s only so many YouTube videos we can watch that teach us self-defense.
New Era
We live in a world where technology is with us from the moment we wake up, to the moment we sleep. So the question of our time is: Is there something tech that can help us avoid such trouble?
You must have seen this little guy in YouTube advertisements (that you’re forced to watch), or even the “Top 10” lists of your smartphone’s app store. SafeTrek, developed by college students, is the perfect little application for you to pay $2.99 monthly and be absolutely safe.
The safety feature on this can be applied at any time, but is seen mostly on those late night walks home, or scary Uber rides.
Essentially, you press this button that you see on the picture above, each time you’re entering a risky situation… till you feel safe.
In other words, say you start your taxi/Uber ride, okay? You have that button pressed till you’re safely at your destination. Your GPS location is frequently updated, and that’s where this gets interesting.
“How does this keep me safe?“
If a few seconds after releasing the button, you haven’t entered your customizable pin-code to cancel: your coordinates are sent to local law enforcement who will immediately get to you. Pretty cool, eh?
How does Apple come in?
As most know (or should know), Apple already allows emergency 911 calling. But what happens when we don’t have those few seconds to reach every number? What if we dial a “912” by accident? “Welcome to Pizza Hut”
“The user may program the electronic device to recognize input entered with a particular sequence of fingers, such as pinky-ring-pinky, as a command to make an emergency call” – is what is stated in the patent.
If you ever ran into a situation where you had to have personalized screen-taps to get out of trouble, we’re not sure how convenient that would be. Not only can one forget these minor details in moments of crisis, but if one has the time to “pinky-ring-pinky” then one has time to dial 911.
That’s not it –
Not only will your GPS coordinates be sent to law enforcement, but your iPhone will immediately start up your mic and camera to capture anything that’s happening, to potentially use as evidence. Of course… for now, this is just a –
Who knows if we’ll see this in the next software update or in the next iPhone itself. What we do see, are flaws in everything.
We mentioned how in a moment of crisis, the last thing we would be able to remember or perform without struggling are screen taps with different fingers.
“But what about SafeTrek? That seems nice!“
Sure it does. But what if you’re pressing the button while you’re in your Uber and you happen to drop your phone? Or you’re intoxicated or sleepy and your thumb leaves your screen. 10 seconds might not be enough time to grab your phone and enter your pin code to “cancel” the call. Aren’t we wasting the time of law enforcement in that case?
What do you think?
IFLSG is keeping up with times – and I’ll occasionally record videos instead of writing articles.
This is mainly because although our articles are a great read (right?), there are many like us who like opening up a YouTube video and doing other stuff at the same time – while still being educated.
If there’s any suggestion you have on what topics you’d like to see us cover in our videos, or anything at all: do let us know in the comments below, message me personally, or use our suggestions page!
