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The Advocate : Sept. 14, 2009

Seven years ago in his Texas garage, Robert Guba helped launch what would become Trace Security Inc., now a Baton Rouge company counting more than 1,000 corporate customers seeking safety in such ticklish domains as federal corporate governance laws and health-care privacy.

For an encore, Guba jumped down to earth to tackle something at the fingertips of consumers: how to say no to texts, e-mails and phone calls while driving.

Dozens of states, including Louisiana, prohibit text-messaging while driving. Others are enforcing stiff fines for merely talking on a phone while driving. Prison terms and multimillion-dollar lawsuits have ensued from mishaps caused by driving while telecommunicating.

More than five years ago, Harvard University researchers calculated the annual costs associated with U.S. accidents caused by cell phones at $43 billion. Starkly put, cell phone distractions accounted for 6 percent of all auto accidents, 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries a year, Harvard’s Center for Risk Analysis found.

In July, Virginia Tech University researchers used 6 million hours of observation to determine that drivers are 23 times more likely to have an accident when text-messaging behind the wheel.

It was enough to make Guba sit up and listen when a business colleague, Maryland native Sean Brown, called him with a business plan for stopping the madness. With Guba’s software experience and Brown’s concept for delaying a user’s incoming calls and blocking outgoing messages until a vehicle is at rest, obdEdge LLC was born.

“We need a solution that’s easy,” Guba said. Other firms are promoting technologies for a similar end, he said, but the means is less effective.

Canadian firm Aegis Mobility Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, employs a GPS, or global positioning system of satellite technology, to track vehicle movements in tandem with a wireless communications carrier.

Guba said his company’s cellcontrol solution doesn’t rely on satellite communications, has a hardware device plugged directly into a vehicle’s onboard computer diagnostics system for greater accuracy, and communicates directly to software that users will download from cellcontrol’s Web site.

After a one-time $24 activation fee, cellcontrol users pay $7.99 to $9.99 a month for the service, which is cheaper than the $10 to $20 per month that Aegis representatives told CBS News they’d be charging upon starting their service this year.

In its cell phone/driving solution, Utah-based Safe Driving Systems LLC plans to use wireless transmission from a special key — obtained for a one-time fee of less than $50 — plus monthly fees to be determined.

Though that company’s Key2Safe Driving system also offers Internet-based monitoring of vehicles for parents and commercial fleet owners, the key device is more easily defeated by obtaining a duplicate key and doesn’t allow for talking while idling on the roadside, said Brown, who is director of business development for obdEdge LLC.

No system, Brown acknowledges, is without limitations. A teen driver, for instance, could borrow the phone of a passenger who’s not on the cellcontrol system and talk or text while driving.

That’s where parental involvement comes in, he said. Brown’s brother-in-law plans to contact parents of his 16-year-old daughter’s friends about cellcontrol.

“He plans on asking parents to put the software on their phones,” Brown said. “It’s kind of a viral approach to marketing, but it also extends that security.”

A national commercial launch of cellcontrol will occur Tuesday for obdEdge (the company’s first three letters stand for “on-board diagnostics,” which indicates how the system connects to the vehicle it tracks).

David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah, has studied the effects of cell phone use on driving for a decade. The Harvard University numbers — 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries caused each year by cell phone-using drivers — probably understate the actual threat significantly, he said.

The 2003 study came when there were 128 million cell phone plans in use in the United States. Research by obdEdge shows 84 percent of U.S. residents have a cellular subscription now, or 257 million people. Though the percentage of drivers is smaller in some countries, obdEdge estimates the potential global market at 3 billion cellular subscribers.

Strayer said the size of the market means there could be room for multiple players with competitive technologies. He knows of five companies that, like obdEdge, have applied for patents to control cell phone use during driving.

“This one (obdEdge) sounds like it could be effective,” Strayer said. “I think there’s probably a large and growing market share (but) it may be that there’s just one or two that actually win.”

Strayer said he thinks a federal ban on text-messaging while driving could be enacted within two years, something that would drive market demand higher.

In July, U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., introduced legislation to ban drivers from texting on a phone or personal electronic device while operating a moving vehicle.

In addition to Guba and Brown, former Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge executive Don Powers is a managing partner of obdEdge LLC. Having begun research in 2008 and testing of the cellcontrol system in April, obdEdge is still in its first round of venture capital financing.

Without disclosing how much money they’ll need, the principals said they have access to sufficient capital to take cellcontrol through a second round of financing and well into commercial operations. Sometime in 2010, Guba said obdEdge — housed at the Louisiana Technology Park on Florida Boulevard — could employ 20 to 30 people.

The initial launch will be for phones on Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platform, followed by additional mobile platforms (now in a testing mode) for Nokia, LG, Samsung and Sony phones. The obdEdge solution will work for 85 percent to 90 percent of phones on the market, Guba said. Alas, iPhones won’t be among that number until Apple provides access to that phone’s operating system, Brown said.

The obdEdge principals also are pursuing partnerships with cellular carriers, insurers, car rental companies, auto dealers and fleet managers — all parties who would have a vested interest in safer vehicle operation for their customers.

“There’s a lot of activity going on in this space,” Guba said.

Terry Jones, a Baton Rouge venture capital consultant, is advising obdEdge LLC.

“The bottom line is it’s just a horrible problem: There are people who are losing family members over this,” Jones said of the driving-while-distracted-by-phone phenomenon. “In venture capital vernacular, this product solves a very serious pain, and it’s a well-thought-out product.”

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