Texting while driving can be dangerous, and 19 states already prohibit the practice. The Governors Highway Safety Association has spoken out in support of such bans, and President Obama has banned texting while driving for all federal employees. A group of researchers at Clemson University's Human-Centered Computing Lab hopes to make texting by voice a "less-distracted," safer alternative.

Sending text messages is more popular than calling in the US, though there is no definitive answer why. "The simple answer is we don't really know why," Dr. Juan Gilbert, director of Clemson's Human-Centered Computing department, told Ars. "What we do know is that users don't want to call, but want to text."

Gilbert and his team have developed a technology called VoiceTEXT to address that concern. The system works by connecting a cell phone to an in-car hands-free system and setting it to "vocal" mode. This will connect the phone to a central server, which can then record and send messages. Depending on the status of the receiving phone, the message will be transmitted as a voicemail message, an e-mail with a link to the message audio file, or transcribed using speech recognition software and sent as an SMS message. Text messages sent to the phone in "vocal" mode can be read aloud to the driver using text-to-speech software.

The system uses a remote server, which users dial into when using vocal mode. However, Gilbert told Ars that individual apps could be made for different phones to make activation and interfacing with the server even easier. Such apps could also be used to upload contact data to the server, which is needed to interpret voice commands for selecting a recipient of a message.

Certainly smartphones could be tapped to provide similar functionality, using the iPhone's Voice Control feature. The benefit of Gilbert's system, however, is that it doesn't require any specific phone or OS. "Your cell provider would offer this as an option," he told Ars. "We are looking to get the technology licensed by Google, Verizon, OnStar, or other service providers."

No deals have been yet been made, but Gilbert believes the system is mature enough that it could be implemented, tested, and operational before the end of this year.