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Your Brain Waves Are a Password: How Your Next Car Will Check You're Not a Thief
cartechboy writes "And you thought stealing cars was hard today? You're facing locks, kill switches, LoJacks, OnStar, and more. But there's worse on the way: Engineers at Japan's Tottori University have developed a prototype theft-prevention system that uses brain waves to identify drivers. That's right: The system samples your brain waves, stores them--and actually shuts down the car if the driver's EEG signals don't match what's on file. It also busts drunk and sleepy drivers, because their brain waves differ from those when you're fully awake and totally sober. One non-Tron downside: If you want to drive, you have to wear a scary-looking set of sensors on your skull so the car can constantly reads your brainwaves."
"One non-Tron downside: If you want to drive, you have to wear a scary-looking set of sensors on your skull so the car can constantly reads your brainwaves."
In other words - none of this will ever actually see the light of day.
#DeleteChrome
What if I'm hugely stressed out because a tsunami or forest fire is coming or my critically injured child needs rushing to hospital or some such? If that changes my brain waves enough to prevent me driving, it would be unfortunate.
(To be fair, TFA says they're looking initially to use it on buses and armoured cars. I wonder if "masked man is pointing gun at my head and ordering me to drive" sufficiently alters the brain waves.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I'd be happy if the technology could be used just to detect brain waves from the driver and prevents the car starting if it doesn't detect anything.
Some of the maniac's I see driving around here are beyond comprehension.
This space for rent
"Hi Boss, I can't come to work today. I have a migraine. Yeah, my car refuses to start until I'm well again. I might be in this afternoon."
By bypassing this system entirely.
IANACT.
This is a really bad idea. If I need to rush someone to the hospital it doesn't matter if I have two beers in me or if I just woke up. And I don't want my car telling me I'm too sleepy to drive -- and there would be no real difference between "just waking up" and "sleepy" anyway. Let's treating me like I'm all grown up and can make my own damn decisions about when to drive okay?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Is there enough change in the brain waves of teenagers to detect their growth as being a different person? What about certain disorders that might not effect one's ability to drive or just aging in general? Also, why would it matter if you are drunk of sleepy if your car drives itself?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Reminds me of the studies that show how some people's presence can make machines work properly, while other's makes them malfunction.
This might stop joy riding, but it won't stop professional car thieves. It goes a little like this... carefully remove the head lamp cover, remove the lamp, stuff a bunch of tin foil in it. Then kick the bumper. *HONKKkk--zrrrrcccch....* Now pull up the short truck, hook the wench up, drag it up the ramp and into the back, hop out, close the door, drive off. With slight modification to the inside, it forms a perfect Faraday cage for the car's electronics... then drive it to the chop shop... also in a nice big metal cage, chop everything up... remove any tracking devices such as OnStar that weren't disabled when you shorted the battery. Total time from capture to parted out: 2 hours. Which is right about the time you finish filling out that nice long form at the police station about how you had your fancy car parked out front for "only a minute" while you ran inside.
Guys... I don't know how much clearer I can make this; Criminals already just don't fuck with car alarms or ignition interlocks... they just load the car up wholesale into another vehicle. It's only the gang-bangers and joy riders that mess with that.
This technology will slow down a car thief for exactly... zero seconds. They don't even need to get in the vehicle to steal it. It doesn't happen like in Grand Theft Auto or like those crime dramas that seem to be clogging prime time TV. In the real world, a team of six professional car thieves can move a dozen cars in a night.
Oh, I know what you're thinking -- you'll just canvas the local junk yards or ebay and find someone selling your car parts. Yeah, no. Your parts are loaded into large crates, and shipped overseas. Your car is sitting in a dozen different shipping containers a few days after it's stolen. No serial numbers on the parts; Those are just discarded. Don't worry though, when they come back into the country 4--6 months from now, it'll be from a salvage title with new VINs and engine serial numbers. Next time you see a hurricane or a major flood somewhere in the world, think of all those delicious salvage titles being sold off for a few bucks each. Their only value is a new set of serial numbers for a stolen car that was nowhere near the disaster area.
Money laundering is hard, but laundering car parts? Dead simple. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. But if wearing a silly cap with electrodes in it is what it takes for you to feel like car theft is something that only happens to the other guy because you've got the latest car alarm or interlock system, well, okay.
But the thieves don't care. Chances are, your car will be in a hundred pieces before someone asks... "Hey... what do we do with this stupid-looking cap?" ... and it winds up in a dumpster somewhere a few hours later, having performed its only real function: Making you feel better.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Personally I would prefer my car being stolen while I'm not using it than me not being able to use when I really need it.
Winner, winner! That's exactly why I have insurance on my vehicles. I'm paying someone else to accept the risk of theft. And they're gambling that I won't be a victim.
Sure, I don't want my nice new car stolen, nor even my old truck. I take sensible precautions, such as protecting my keys and always locking the vehicles when I leave them, no matter what. But if despite my best efforts, they are stolen, hey, there's some measure of reimbursement. Will I be happy? No. Will the reimbursement get me the same vehicle? Probably not. But will I be without a vehicle for too long? No, the insurance company is well-paid to get me back into a similar vehicle.
Might the insurance company decide to offer me a discount should I wear this stupid hat? They offer discounts for LoJack systems and other anti-theft measures, so they might offer one for a brain-scanning helmet. Will they someday require them? Probably not unless people really like and accept them.
John
In contrast, my X would make things go haywire. Whenever she went out shopping, her friends would always get in another checkout line or make her last since they knew something would go wrong with the register once she got near it.
And for the record, this is a classic example of observational selection bias. Get a new car? Suddenly you notice that same car everywhere. Everyone bought the same car you did! Except they totally didn't, it just seems that way. How about one a little closer to home -- ever had that friend that claimed they could turn off street lights? Or that the traffic signals "have it in for you"? More observational selection bias. Humans have this tendancy to see patterns where none exist -- like seeing faces in clouds. There's a good evolutionary reason for this too -- see something move in the bushes and ZOMFG IT'S A BEAR! ... 99 times out of 100, it isn't a bear... but over a few hundred generations... guess what: Those few times it really was a bear has an impact on a person's ability to reproduce. Funny, isn't it; Seeing things that (usually) aren't there has an evolutionary benefit.
So there you have it. SSSSSSCCCCCIENCE! (cape swish) (flies away)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Think in Russian...
Many cars are driven by more than one driver, such as a husband and wife, and possibly one or more teenage kids. This means that such a car would need to have the ability to store multiple profiles, so just record one profile while sleepy, one profile while drunk, one profile while fully awake and sober. And perhaps a fourth profile while in a state of blind panic in case you ever have to drive to the emergency room, and maybe one where you've just had too much coffee, etc.
The real difficulty is going to be when a song you like comes on the radio and the car stalls in the middle of the freeway because your brainwaves have just changed. Recording a profile for each song you like would no doubt tax its memory.
The new age explanation is bullshit but let's not confuse their observational claims with their conclusions.
For example, I saw a bright "aura" around my headmaster when I was in grade 3. That was close to 50yrs ago but I still remember it clearly because it was the first and by far the brightest aura I've seen, hot Aussie summers day, assembly yard was giant concrete oven, the sun was high in the sky with heavy shade forming a backdrop to the podium, I wasn't the only kid to see it and I believed I had seen an aura well into my twenties, I went to university in my late-20's, now I'm convinced it was a "rainbow" effect caused by the evaporating sweat of an "Englishman in the midday sun", combined with just the right viewing angle and backdrop.
Other examples from my childhood, Meteorologists claimed "ball lightning does not exist" until it was observed melting a hole through a window of the NY meteorological centre. Black holes were a "mathematical curiosity". It was a "physical impossibility" for exo-planets to be observed with a telescope. At the end of the day, "Science rocks" because it has something no other philosophy offers, the balls to admit when it's wrong.
As for TFA. Most of the comments here simply don't "get it". Japan is renowned for wacky inventions, it's more of an art form than anything else, the (cheap) inventions are intended to be impractical, a kind of "fart cushion" for the Japanese sense of humour. The more impractical the invention, the more the fans it will love it. This one is a fine example, it involves cars, computers, exposed wires, and a silly hat with a jelly coating on the inside. Although it probably won't make as much money as the "baby mop" which offers more value to a western sense of humour.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hey Bob can I borrow your truck this weekend? Sorry Fred, it only allows my brainwaves and I don't want to pay $2000 additional brainwave license.