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An Extra Set Of Robotic Eyes To Keep The Driver Awake
from the where's-the-clown-spray dept
It's been well over two years since IBM first announced plans to put a virtual clown in your car. The idea was that it would monitor whether or not the driver was paying attention to the road or getting drowsy or whatever, and would tell the driver jokes or even spray water in the driver's face to keep him or her awake. Yes, it would be the virtual Bozo the Clown riding shotgun. Not much has come of that plan, but others seem to be working on similar - though, less clown-like - systems. A company named Seeing Machines, with backing from Volvo, is working on a similar system that will sound an alarm if it thinks the driver isn't paying enough attention to the road. They think it could prevent quite a few accidents - though, I wonder how many false alarms it will take before people just start disconnecting the alerting system?
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Annoying Technology
First of all, I would have this disconnected in a heartbeat.
Every time the sun is in your eyes and you close them or squint them there appears to be a good chance that you could set off this system. Same with glancing in mirrors, etc. I would think that it would be one more distraction ( for me ) that would have me more concerned with weather or not I might set off the system, than paying attention to the road.
I used to have a Nissan Maxima that had voice in it. You could turn off the voice for everything except " Fuel level is low " This was so annoying when you were on the way to the gas station and every 30 seconds a machine is telling you something that your well aware of.
Some technology in an automobile is useful and has added benefits, but I would imagine until this technology has a chance to mature, it will prove more annoying than helpful. Sadly, that may kill the technology even though human being should be smart enough to already know better than to drive when they are tired. Studies have proven this is worse than driving drunk.
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same old same old
Our 1973 Buick Estate station wagon had a "speed alert" feature that was a little needle that you set at the speed limit and it would buzz if you were speeding. After listening to it buzz all the way to Florida one Christmas the first thing my father did upon reaching my grandparents house was take the dashboard apart and disable the buzzer with a pair of wire cutters.
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