Nuance (News - Alert) has updated its voice recognition application, Dragon Mobile Assistant, for the Android platform, allowing for a hands-free driver mode and voice notification for users across North America, among other things.

The updated application features an auto-detection mode, letting the application detect when a user is in a moving vehicle and switching the program over to a hands-free driver mode. That will allow users to keep their hands on the 10 and two and their eyes on the road.

But the application's update isn't limited to just driver mode. The updated application will also let users set up Dragon to read out Facebook (News - Alert) status updates, messages, phone calls, appointments and voice-enabled mail. It'll also let users activate Dragon with customized wake-up words.

“Dragon aspires to be an incredibly reliable and intuitive mobile personal assistant, not only responding to commands and providing relevant content, but also anticipating people’s needs in the moment—just like a true personal assistant,” Michael Thompson (News - Alert), executive vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile said in a statement. “Dragon’s truly conversational nature and expansive directed search capabilities give people an assistant with purpose, content and information from the content providers they trust the most—leveraging a broad ecosystem without boundaries.”

But does a driver mode for Dragon Mobile Note really make drivers safer?

A recent study commissioned by AAA auto insurance found that hands-free voice control devices and technologies are just as — and in some cases, more — distracting as texting and manually entering data into a smartphone. That's because speech to text and voice-recognition systems cause more cognitive distractions than a driver would experience otherwise.

If the study holds up, it'll raise some serious questions around productivity on the go. Nearly 42 states have an outright ban or a law limiting drivers from texting while driving. If the same sort of legislative hysteria takes over distracted driving as texting did, then Bluetooth headphones and voice-activated systems could be greatly limited in how they can function. 

If that happens, then expect another update to Dragon Mobile Assistant.