In recent years, portable terminal devices such as a smartphone (multifunctional cellular phone) and a tablet terminal have rapidly become widespread and increased in functionality. Thus, it is indispensable to acquire information from these devices in daily life. However, in view of safety, it may be undesirable that a driver operate these portable terminal devices without any restriction while driving a vehicle. Thus, there has been proposed a technique that restricts the operation of a portable terminal device by a driver during a ride in the vehicle. For example, there has been proposed a technique that executes control for prohibiting part of the operation of the portable terminal device or converting character data into voice data according to, for example, a traveling state of a vehicle (refer to Patent Literature 1, for example).
However, the configuration described in Patent Literature 1 is a configuration for performing enable/disable setting of an operation or conversion of data with respect to information received during driving of the vehicle. Thus, when the configuration described in Patent Literature 1 is merely employed, a driver may not be able to sufficiently utilize time during a ride in the vehicle for the operation to the portable terminal device. That is, people of today find a short free time (hereinbelow, also referred to as a spare time) to operate portable terminal devices. However, in the configuration of Patent Literature 1, even when there is a time during which the portable terminal device can be operated during a ride in the vehicle, it is not possible to actively tell a driver the generation of the time. Thus, for example, it may not be possible for a driver to sufficiently execute the operation of the portable terminal device, which has been made pending since before the driver gets into the vehicle, by utilizing time during a ride in the vehicle.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds