Literally!
Can Toyota Make Careless Drivers Pay Attention?
Japanese automaker Toyota has developed a safety technology that it says will keep the driver’s eyes on the road.
An image-processing computer system developed by Toyota Motor Corp. and a Toyota affiliate uses a camera near the steering wheel to detect when the driver stops looking straight ahead.
The system flashes a light on the dashboard display and emits a beeping noise when the eyes start to wander. If the driver still doesn’t respond, brakes kick in, Toyota said Tuesday.
Research shows that most accidents happen because the driver isn’t paying attention, according to Toyota.
Ridiculous that it’s come to this!
mmm not bad idea in my opinion, although I don’t know about the whole automatic brakes idea, is the car going to sense wether someone is close behind as well?
So this light blinks and the brakes go on. I follow that (kinda). My question is what happens when I go to check my rear and sideview mirrors? I’m not looking straight ahead then. So this light blinks and the brakes go on. How’s that to help me drive?
It also emits a beeping noise, just to be sure.
This isn’t as bad as the already existing Ford cars and others that beep loudly if you don’t wear your seat belt.
Hey this is a good thing. It’s an improvement over an existing gadget that you hang on your glasses, which beeps when you head begins to sag with sleep. When driving you’re supposed to look all around (not just straight ahead) to avoid hypnosis and anticipate problems, but MOSTLY you should look ahead. When you look elsewhere for awhile, why not have the car try to wake you up???
– The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
And you thought the unbuckled seatbelt alarm is annoying! I bet this new system will cause more accidents than it prevents.
Put your seat belt on! Beep Beep! Keep your eyes on the road! Beep! Sit up straight! Beep. Quit mumbling! Beep beep beep. Chew your food!
Ahhhhhhhhhh! Make it stop!
This could be a god send considering the driving skill, attention span and knowledge of the average commuter.
How about removing the ash tray and cigarette lighter. Smoking while driving probably causes its fair share of accidents too.
I wonder how a system to avoid drivers daydreaming while with their eyes on the road would work…
I had an accident a few days ago in which I was on ‘autopilot’ while driving and the car in front of me stopped… I breaked, while my brain was still ‘away’. In the middle of the braking my brain suddenly realized the car had actually stopped and I was closing in real fast, so I WOKE UP and immediately braked HARD… I was doing 80 km/h, that’s around 50 mph, so the breaking was long, noisy and hard. I happened to just ‘bump’ into the front car and no real harm was done (miracle?), but if somehow I could be prevented from going into ‘autopilot’…
I consider myself a careful driver, I rarely go over 75 mph (speed limit in highways in Portugal), always keep a safe distance from the guy in front, don’t drink, don’t do drugs, always fasten the seatbelt… So this got me thinking…
If we want to stop lots of accidents, we need to stop giving a license to anyone that walks through the door and stands in line for 5 hours. Or… if we want to lower accidents AND raise the intelligence ratio of our country, the age requirement needs to be raised to 18 years old, and students should be asked to focus on their learning rather than their jobs after school. No car = no need for insurance = no job necessity = employment for others, rise = more time for teens to study and learn information about life, career, society = better test scores for No Child Left Behind = teachers may still get blamed unjustly for students refusing to learn, but at least now it may fewer students, and the money that was promised by the government and was never received, may not seem like such a big deal after all.
This is a bad, dangerous, poorly thought out idea – if it isn’t simply PR.
This concept will never make it to production – Toyota’s lawyers are too smart for this. The first time the brakes go on improperly and cause an accident, or some ambulance chaser can effectively claim they will, they are asking for liability. They can’t make enough profit to pay for the lawsuits.
Legal precident; Outboard motors that shut down when oil service failed, or water was detected in the gas. No motor means no control in a rough inlet – people died. A whole bunch of re-calls went out after the lawsuits started rolling in. The manufacturer was sold at pennies on the dollar.
A better invention is one that detects when the driver in front is daydreaming at the stoplight and the driver in front fails to wake up when it turns green. A 200 dB horn should automatically sound.
That I would buy.
And if i saw this babe, my head would definitely turn
I have a suckie dodge caravan…and the darn thing tells me with a ding and an obscure dash icon when a headlight is out (like I’m too **stupid** to be able to tell when I can only see light on half the road). However, when my tail lights were out…it didn’t “sense” a thing or give me any indications (btw, both taillights burned out at the same time!!!).
Thanks alot for idiot devices on automobiles. This one sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Is this suppose to substitute for the wife? : )
What’s next, an electrode in the seat that’ll give a shock on your third offense or maybe your car will call you a roadside taxi cause it refuses to drive you home?
LOL. NumLock, that is funny but also so disturbing in that the engineers didn’t/don’t have enough common sense to figure that out. At least they could apply the warning to the front and back to cover all bases.