Slashdot Mirror
The Car That Knows When You'll Get In an Accident Before You Do
aurtherdent2000 sends word about a system designed to monitor drivers to determine when they're about to do something wrong. "I'm behind the wheel of the car of the future. It's a gray Toyota Camry, but it has a camera pointed at me from the corner of the windshield recording my every eye movement, a GPS tracker, an outside-facing camera and a speed logger. It sees everything I'm doing so it can predict what I'm going to do behind the wheel seconds before I do it. So when my eyes glance to the left, it could warn me there's a car between me and the exit I want to take. A future version of the software will know even more about me; the grad students developing what they’ve dubbed Brains4Cars plan to let drivers connect their fitness trackers to the car. If your health tracker 'knows' you haven’t gotten enough sleep, the car will be more alert to your nodding off."
"We'll eventually be giving up more and more manual control of our cars, and as a result, driving is going to become safer and safer."
Driving is already pretty damn safe in the west given the total number of journeys made and distances travelled. Its only the bedwetting health and safety hysterics who would have us believe otherwise.
Personally I have no intention of giving up manual control of my car and I'm quite happy with the teeny tiny risk that entails. Besides, people who don't want to drive already have a number of options - taxi, bus, train.
it has a camera pointed at me from the corner of the windshield recording my every eye movement
Unless you're looking over your shoulder to execute a reverse maneuver from a parking space or driveway, which is generally good form in driving and encouraged in DMV training, then its useless.
it can predict what I'm going to do behind the wheel seconds before I do it.
Unless the collision is due to a preventable combination of excessive speed, poor visibility and road conditions, and insufficient vehicle maintenance in which case the system isnt helpful. youll also find a high rate of false positives for the following:
1. glancing toward the radio and climate controls.
2. large vehicles. Trucks, semis, and even imposing suv's can cause subconscious distraction from the road and unpredictable eye movement.
3. rain, snow, anything that hits the windshield in general, causes strange eye movement. squinting, blinking, you name it. There is an entire physiology to why we subconsciously act the way we do when something hits a windscreen.
4. Your phone. buzzing, beeping, will cause subconscious visual abberation and deviation. 5. entering and exiting tunnels causes pupil tracking issues, eye movement, and a range of other light sensitive problems for most tracking rigs. you actively have to compensate for a pulsing, somewhat unpredictable level of cockpit light. how the human eye does this is amazing to me.
So in terms of production automobiles, we've gotten exceedingly good at keeping soft, warm, impact prone parts of the human body from being badly injured or damaged. 8-12 airbags are fairly standard on most cars these days. Autobraking is a fairly simple technology as well, so expect to see that on more models. But the number one reason why safety in a car continues to decline is speed. Drivers routinely make false assumptions that roads are 'rated for' speeds higher than the limit, or that its casual and normal to go faster, or that their car is 'capable' of faster speeds when they dont realize the limiting factor in he equation is the human. human reaction times are fine for anything less than 9.8m/s^2, but above that we're horrible. speed limits factor in surviveability for both vehicles as well, not just your Canyonero SUV. Inattentive drivers? sure, but the technology has existed in Mercedes for 10 years, and lane assit warning tech helps catch the glaring problems with most drivers. Disclaimer: the company i work for has tried optical tracking in the past.
Good people go to bed earlier.