Iconosys Concludes Cross-country “textkills” Tour To Rally College Students Against Twd

Sept. 30, 2010 - PRLog -- Laguna Hills, CA – September 30, 2010  -- Iconosys, Inc., the company behind SMS Replier™ and DriveReply,™ the Smartphone safety apps that combat the growing social epidemic of Distracted Driving and/or Texting While Driving (or TWD), has concluded its 18-day cross-country “TextKills Tour” (www.textkills.com) of college campuses to raise awareness about the dangers associated with this addictive and potentially deadly behavior.

SMS Replier™ eliminates the need for TWD via a speed triggered, fully customizable auto-reply to texts and calls, plus other convenient safety features.  During the cross-country outreach, Iconosys amassed nearly 10,000 signatures on its 36 foot “TextKills Tour Bus,” in support of its mission to eliminate TWD and the pledge to not text or talk on the cell phone while driving.

Beginning Thursday, September 9th, the “TextKills Tour,” which was conceived and driven by Iconosys CEO and founder Wayne Irving II, departed Southern California. Tour stops included the following colleges and schools: University of Denver in Denver, CO; the University of Nebraska; Simpson College in Indianola, IA; St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA; Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL; Columbia College Chicago in Chicago, IL; Youngstown State University in Youngstown, OH; the University System of Maryland at Hagerstown, MD; Georgetown University in Washington, DC; Belmont University in Nashville, TN; and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, AR.  The tour reached its zenith in Washington DC on Tuesday, September 21st at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) second National Distracted Driving Summit, hosted by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

Mr. Irving remarked, “Our cross-country college tour against the potentially disastrous effects of distracted driving and TWD was more successful than we could have imagined, and has, we believe, spawned what some are calling the ‘TextKills’ movement.  We sincerely thank all of the students, colleges and every town we visited for being so hospitable and so greatly supportive of our efforts and outreach.”

Throughout the tour, Mr. Irving was interviewed by a variety of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC network affiliates, as well as by a bevy of print journalists. In addition, the TextKills Tour Bus visited HARPO Studios in Chicago, home of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, and gathered signatures from many HARPO employees, furthering  Oprah’s commitment to TWD awareness, consistent with her “No Phone Zone” campaign.

With the enormous success of the “TextKills Tour”, Iconosys is planning a follow-up tour that will visit a variety of colleges along the Pacific coast in early November 2010.  A list of tour stops and dates will soon be available at www.textkills.com.

According to the NHTSA, in 2009 nearly 5,500 people died and more than half a million were injured in crashes involving distracted drivers.  This reflects a continuation of a developing public safety crisis, shown by the fact that in the previous year (2008) more than 20 percent of all crashes involved some type of distraction, such as TWD.

"Recently Kentucky reported 217 deaths due to distracted driving during 2009.  Kentucky represents 1.3% of the US population," added Mr. Irving.  "If you extrapolate those numbers to the total US population, 2009's numbers don't make sense to me and as more states start to check for text messaging at accident scenes, 2010 may have a horrible surprise for us."

The world’s infatuation with texting has grown from 4.1 trillion text messages per year in 2008, to more than 1.6 trillion text messages per day in 2010.  Iconosys’ Irving warns that the side-effects of this practice (death and injury due to car accidents) has yet to be fully realized.    

“It seems to be an undeniable trend that the world is becoming more and more dependent on texting as a primary means of communication, particularly for teenagers who reportedly average over 4,000 text messages per month,” continues Irving.  “This ‘always-on’ aspect of our daily lives, which borders on an addiction for many, is opening the world’s eyes to the very real dangers of TWD.”

To see the TextKills Tour Bus, please visit www.textkills.com

About Iconosys, Inc.

Iconosys, Inc. is developing a series of technologies designed to make mobile applications better, faster, easier, and ultimately safer to use. Iconosys' flagship product, SMS Replier™ with DriveReply™, is a revolutionary mobile phone application designed to couple many convenience services with addressing the growing problem of communicating safely while driving a car, truck, or motorcycle.

Iconosys' CEO Wayne Irving II, a pioneer in next-generation telecom concepts, has led the drive to take advantage of GPS and other onboard motion technologies to build lifesaving and life-enhancing products, and to create new and better tools for wireless platforms and operating systems.

Iconosys proprietary technology, developed with support from Motorola, is a complex series of algorithms and readings from the technology running on today’s Smartphones; this includes, without limitation, GPS and other motion sensoring, coordinated with Google mapping to provide an accurate and responsive background service to most, if not all, of the upcoming Iconosys technology releases.

Each mobile app from Iconosys, including SMS Replier™,is enhanced with Iconosys' DriveReply™ technology, which our testing shows is up to 90% more efficient in battery consumption, a key differentiator from other producers of GPS dependent Smartphone applications.  

For more information, including demonstration videos, on Iconosys, Inc, please visit: http://www.iconosys.com or http://www.smsreplier.com.  

For more information about the 2010 Distraction.gov  Distracted Driving Summit, please visit: http://distraction.gov/2010summit/.