Cars with Voice Command Systems Hephzibah GA
The Joy of Voice Command
The Joy of Voice Command By Zach Bowman, DriverSide Contributing Editor
If you’ve ever suffered through your bank’s automated phone system, you probably know voice recognition software leaves something to be desired. What should be a five second exchange between you and an actual person, or you and your phone’s keypad turns into blood-pressure raising event. After all, how many ways can you say “yes” into a phone? When Ford first announced its plans to jump into bed with Microsoft to create Sync, a voice-command system for in-car media, I had terrible visions of me shouting profanities at the dashboard of a new Focus . People in the lanes next to me would stop and stare, mothers would cover their children’s ears – the works.
Thankfully, both Ford and Microsoft seem to have done their homework. Sync is billed as a one-stop solution for all of your mobile media. Watching the promo video for the system, it’s hard not to look on with a cynical eye. In the video, a smiling young gent breathlessly commands phone calls, music and text messages by merely pushing buttons on the steering wheel and speaking out loud. Watching it reminds me a bit too much of those amusement park rides that take you through the hall of the future. Have a cell phone? Great. An MP3 player? No problem. Get text messages while you’re driving? Sync’s got you covered in the year 2008! Now where’s my robo puppy?
It’s not that I don’t think the premise isn’t great. Though talking on your cell while driving is illegal in California and a few other localities, in most of the U.S. drivers can chat as much as they like – weaving in and out of traffic and taking out orphanages as they go. Even worse are those that somehow believe they can pull off the reverse triple-axle of using a cell phone behind the wheel – the text while driving. It’s not like phones are the only culprits, either. iPods and other mobile media devices are just as bad if you’re looking for a song while flying down the interstate. It’s just that frantically mashing buttons on a steering wheel may be just as bad as eying a keypad while in the captain’s seat if the system doesn’t work properly.
To find out for myself, I asked a buddy who had just picked up an ’09 Focus, complete with Sync, to show me the goods. One of my first questions was how easy it is to hook up different media players. Taking along my iPod’s USB cable, all it took to get my Apple to talk with his Blue Oval was plugging it into the in-dash jack. With a quick word about not driving while distracted, Sync immediately recognized the device. Now how’s about searching?
Though I felt like a David Hasselhoff stand-in on the set of Knight Rider while barking commands at my buddy’s Focus, the system managed to pick up my selections without too much o...