It is no secret that distracted drivers are causing thousands of unnecessary deaths and millions of accidents every year because drivers are taking their eyes off the road to read their cell phone screen’s messages, social media apps and videos.
The problem has become a true epidemic and is getting worse!
A recent AT&T survey reports that 98% of drivers agree that texting and driving is a very dangerous habit, but 49% of the same respondents also admitted that they still sent texts, checked social media sites and/or talked on their phones while driving.
Did You Know That:
Please watch these videos to get a sense of how bad the epidemic has grown with regards to how many teen and adult drivers are losing their lives due to distracted drivers that are reading their cell phone screens to check out texts and smartphone apps while driving:
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and other mobile wireless carriers all recognize that people have a tremendous urge to see what news, messages or emails just dinged their cell phones.
Nomophobia – the fear of being without one’s smartphone – is real and effects about half the population. Constantly checking for emails, texts, tweets, and updates is a very dangerous habit – and possible addiction – that needs to be addressed.
To combat this problem, 46 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation that bans texting while driving, but these laws are very hard to enforce and have proven ineffective – just like corporate cell phone policies.
Our challenge is finding a solution that allows cell phones to notify drivers of incoming calls or texts, while eliminating the temptation to take their eyes off the road.
Faced with this real world problem, brothers Michael and Thomas Maguire decided to solve it. Both brothers have experience managing fleets or salespeople who drive in their territories every day. Tom has two teenage sons – one that recently received his driver’s license and another who will start driver’s education soon.
Their simple solution is an intelligent cell phone case that allows drivers to store their cell phones out-of-sight inside a Shellback “Smartphone Safe“ and removes the urge to check their cell phone screens while driving.
The Smartphone Safe is an intelligent cell phone case that parents or fleet managers can use to store phones out-of-site and prevent drivers from viewing their cell phone screens. Cell phones can still receive calls and messages, but drivers cannot see the phone.
Once cell phones are paired and stored inside the Smartphone Safe, a green light on the outside of the case indicates it is now safe to drive. Real time transmissions allow parents and fleet managers to verify that drivers will experience zero cell phone distractions while out on the road.
The Smartphone Safe also comes with a Live Undistracted Cell Phone App that runs on both Apple iPhones and Android Smartphones. The app continuously monitors sensors inside the case to ensure that cell phones remained locked inside while the vehicle is moving.
Should the driver decide to open the case while driving it will automatically send an alert to parents or fleet managers – notifying them that the phone is now accessible. The real time alert provides the ability to address this dangerous behavior before an accident occurs.
The information is also stored in a database so that parents and fleet managers can review daily, weekly, monthly, or annual reports. We can provide compliance reports for a single driver or an entire fleet of thousands of autos, trucks, school buses, vans, utility vehicles, etc.
Smartphone Safes are the single best way to monitor cell phones and guarantee that cell phone safety policies are being obeyed at all times. It can also be used by driver education schools to teach kids a new methodology for driving with a cell phone. It only takes a few minutes to pull over to a safe parking spot, take the cell phone out of the case, make a call, send a text, check an email, store it back in the case and then head back out on the road safely to their next destination. Training kids and adults to keep their eyes on the road 100% of the time while driving will significantly reduce the number of accidents and deaths caused by cell phones.
There are a few cell phone apps, hardware gadgets, and driver cameras in the marketplace, but none of them prevent drivers from reading their smartphone screens. The Shellback Smartphone Safe is the ONLY product that stores the cell phone out-of-sight and effectively eliminates a driver’s ability to read their cell phones while driving.
Mike and Tom spoke to countless parents and businesses which validated the need to address distracted driving. Everyone agreed this was a growing problem – but no one had a solution. The brothers were convinced the only way to solve the problem was to eliminate the phone. They teamed with an engineering firm, Finishline Product Development Services, to work out the design requirements, draw up cell phone case designs, engineer the case’s intelligent sensors, program a cell phone app and develop the functioning prototypes. The result of all this work is the Shellback SmartPhone Safe.
The team is now ready to go into full production and meet the market place demand. We have a contract manufacturer lined up and we are ready to place our first order that will be used to fulfill orders from this Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and generate enough revenue to conduct a follow-up equity crowdfunding campaign in 12 to 18 months.
We need $50,000 in this initial campaign to:
We will soon begin the process of:
Contributors can help save lives of their loved ones, employees, or complete strangers through our young driver matching program. For every ten contributions directed to our partners – we will send one free Smartphone Safe to either PADD.org or Nikki Cline (East Surrey High School) to provide to new drivers in memory of her son Gage Edwards. Nikki, says “It warms my heart every time I see a person or company be as passionate as I am working towards trying to prevent the avoidable tragedies that can occur from distracted driving.”
Peace of Mind. Since the onset of mobile technology, our roads have become increasingly dangerous. You no longer have the simple peace of mind knowing your loved ones are driving safely. With the Smartphone Safe you now have a simple way to prevent accidents before they happen.
Be the first to get one. No other solution like it exists. Start living undistracted now with a Shellback Smartphone Safe!
We want to make the roads safer and help everyone live and drive undistracted. We all know the phone is a major distraction for drivers. Distracted driving is responsible for 25% of all accidents. The Smartphone Safe is the solution.
If the phone is out-of-sight, the driver will be safer. If the driver is safer we will have less accidents. If we have less accidents we will all benefit.
Quite simply – our campaign hopes to prevent accidents and possibly save lives.
The Smartphone Safe is an intelligent case that secures the phone out-of-sight. The embedded technology confirms and reports phone location and status.
Most distracted driving solutions today focus on the car, the driver, or apps. The Smartphone Safe focuses on the phone. It is the only solution that secures the phone out-of-sight and eliminates the possibility of distraction.
The world’s only fool-proof way to eliminate distracted driving due to smartphones – the Smartphone Safe syncs with your phone and tracks when it is stored out-of-sight while driving. It sends real time notifications whenever the phone is removed from the case while driving.
The Smartphone Safe connects to your smartphone over a Bluetooth connection. It confirms the phone is out-of-sight (the phone goes in the case), reports on device usage in real time (you will know if the case is opened or closed), and tracks data and presents it in a useful way (Cloud-based SQL database and dashboards.)
Once you connect Smartphone Safe to your phone, the Live Undistracted App – available on Android and iOS will continuously monitor your phone status and let you know when the phone is removed from the case.
US Naval sailors who have crossed the equator and gone through a special initiation ceremony are called “Shellbacks.” Our father was a proud veteran of the US Navy, a Shellback, and a steamfitter who worked on some of the greatest buildings in New York City. He drove a fleet vehicle for most of his career. We are confident that he would have never texted while driving – because he would have had no interest in texting at all. But we know that he would be proud that we are trying to make the roads safer for everyone.
Like what we’re doing to make the world a safer place to drive? Please help us spread the word and raise awareness for our cause by sharing this campaign with your family, friends, and business contacts.
To make it worth your while, we want to pay you for sharing this campaign via your social media contacts when anyone in your network buys one of our perks.
Click Here to Join the Shellback Sales Team
For example, if you share our campaign link via social media account, email marketing, press releases, etc, we can track how many people visit our Indiegogo campaign and buy one of our perks. If your marketing activities sold 10 units of our main perk at $280, that would generate $2,800 of revenue for our campaign. To compensate you for your marketing efforts, we will mail you a 10% commission check for $280.
It’s very easy. Simply click on the Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter social media sharing buttons, embed the sharing link on your blog, etc., etc. and you will receive a 10% commission check for every external perk that your marketing efforts sell.
To make it very easy, we’ve even created more that 30 different advertisements that you can post on social media. Simply, go down the list and share the ones you like. When they generate a sale, you earn a commission.
Commissions apply to external sales only and the 10% commission will not be applied to personal purchases of Smartphone Safes. A minimum quota of $1,000 or more of sales is also required so that we don’t have to write a large number of checks for very small commissions. Sales will be tracked with Google Analytics that is tied into the backend of this Indiegogo fundraising campaign.