Texting: A Deadly Habit?
Governments are cracking down on texting while driving. It won't be a good day when some smartphone-punching remote worker causes an accident. |
A frightening look at how technology isn't so great for society: Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than drinking or smoking pot.
That comes as investigators confirmed that the train engineer in last week's deadly crash was texting that day, and that it may have caused the collision.
Several state have made texting while driving illegal, and my sometimes stomping ground of Suffolk County, New York just got in the act. (None of this is a huge surprise: we wrote about it early last year.)
I wonder how companies will respond when their workers are identified as the cause of a crash. It's not hard to imagine. Telecommuting is becoming increasingly en vogue, and plenty of commuting professionals scamper to catch up before getting to the office. The headlines would be awful, and the hit to corporate reputations could be worse.
Our recent mobility survey found that 49 percent of employees at large companies have cell phones, while 19 percent carry smartphones (like BlackBerries or iPhones). Almost 70 percent of mobile workers at smaller firms use smartphones, and just a bit less use cell phones, we're told.
With more telecommuters, and more mobile technologies being deployed in the enterprise, CIOs and security pros clearly need to think through a brand new set of security and governance challenges. How far they've come is difficult to tell, but plenty say they're grappling with it.
An unfortunate event like a car crash (or worse) might force them to enforce stricter policies. In the meantime, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
