Phone app fights distracted driving with rewards

(AP) -- Having trouble leaving the cell phone alone while you're driving, even though it could get you and bystanders killed? Now, there's an app for that - with cash rewards for resisting the phone.

There's a wild flora of applications intended to combat distracted driving, with differing approaches, as the industry tries to figure out how to curb behavior that, by some estimates, causes thousands of deaths every year. SafeCellApp's innovation is that it pays its users, on the theory that money talks where the prospect of sudden death does not.

SafeCellApp was released a few weeks ago for iPhones and Android phones and costs $12. It detects when the phone is moving faster than 5 miles per hour and rewards users if they don't talk on the phone.

©2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.