Want a free coffee? Don't text and drive

Mobile phone use while driving is a dangerous distraction, but one car manufacturer has come up with a unique approach to discouraging it.

Toyota Japan has teamed up with a local coffee house to release a limited time app that rewards drivers for not using their phones while behind the wheel.

It uses GPS data and the phone’s gyro sensors which monitor whether it’s lying flat or sitting upright in your hand.

After 100 kilometres of phone-free driving, the user is given a free coffee voucher, and the offer continues for every 200 kilometres thereafter. Moving the phone while driving, on the other hand, results in a split coffee emoticon and the kilometre counter resets.

However like anything that seems too good to be true, the offer is available for just one week and only functions within the prefecture of Aichi in Japan, which has recorded the country’s highest number of road fatalities for the past 13 years, according to a press release. A spokesperson from Toyota Australia told SBS that while they currently don’t have plans to implement a similar app Down Under, they “will certainly be monitoring to see how the application and associated initiative is received in Japan”.

According to a Deloitte survey conducted last year, 42 per cent of Australians admit to using their mobile phones while driving.