We've all been there. You're enjoying a nice drive with your favorite tune pumping on the stereo, when you look down and realize that you're going 90 mph in a 65 mph zone. Sometimes the music carries you away like that. A new app by OVK called Slow Down for iOS devices aims to use your music in the opposite way to help keep your speed in check.
After installing, users can select the music playlist to which they want to listen from within the app. After manually choosing the speed limit for the road being driven, the app uses the iPhone's GPS antenna to monitor the vehicle's speed. Exceed the speed limit and Slow Down will slow down the your music, providing drivers with an auditory notification that they need to slow down their car. If the speed limit is exceeded by 10 kph or more, the app will stop the music playback altogether until a more reasonable speed is achieved. Check out the app in action in the video below.
It's all quite simple and very novel in execution, but there are a few issues that mar this driver safety app. Firstly, because the speed limit must be manually set, a user who is not paying attention could still find himself speeding if the wrong limiter is checked. Secondly, the three available speed limits are only listed in kilometers per hour and users can't set custom limits that exist outside of these presets, limiting the app's usefulness in the metric-system-phobic U.S.
Slow Down is a free download in the iTunes App Store and worth a try based on its novelty alone.