This Pixel safety feature is making my driving less safe

Our hearing is important, and it’s something we should want to protect. Google agrees; Pixel phones have something called “Sound Exposure Notifications” that monitor how loud your audio is and provide a warning if it thinks things are too loud. That sounds all well and good, but in some situations, like when driving, this feature puts users in danger instead of protecting them.

So, why do I feel like Sound Exposure Notifications are compromising my safety? The notifications trigger whenever the phone hears what it thinks is an unsafe sound level, and it doesn’t matter what situation you’re in. When the notification shows up, ignoring it leads to the phone lowering the volume on its own to what it considers a safe level. In my experience, that’s only one button click above total silence, making anything that’s playing unintelligible.

If I’m driving, I can’t use my phone to dismiss the alert or to raise the volume if it does drop. My Pixel should know I’m driving — I have a portable Android Auto screen in my car that I’m always connected to. Why can’t Google pass the volume alert through to my Android Auto display or, better yet, switch the feature off when I’m in the car?

Having your music spontaneously stop is annoying, but there’s more to the issue. My setup in the car has my phone connected wirelessly to my Android Auto display with an AUX connection to the car’s sound. That means that my Google Maps audio is also muted whenever my phone decides things are too loud.

It’s frustrating enough that whenever I’m going on a long journey, I pull the SIM from my Pixel and put it into my Z Fold 7 instead. That’s annoying but doable for me, but what about the people who don’t have more than one phone?

My setup with a portable Android Auto screen might not be that common, but this is a problem for other users, too. If you’ve got your phone mounted on the dashboard for navigation and music, you’ll at least be able to see the loud volume alert. But in the UK, touching your screen to dismiss it is illegal, and if you were seen doing it by the police, you’d be pulled over. Perhaps Google is somehow unaware that using my phone to dismiss the alert is illegal, unsafe, and irresponsible.

Last year we reported that Google was working on a solution to let us switch off Sound Exposure Notifications, but so far that still hasn’t happened. Adding a toggle, or at least making the phone smart enough not to mess around when I’m driving, shouldn’t be that hard. None of the devices I use from other manufacturers do anything like this, so why Google insists on nannying us so much is beyond me. I remember when Google phones, Nexus or Pixel, gave you freedom that many other phones didn’t. I miss that.