Recently, BMW has been working on reducing the risk of a car accident and the have come up with a brilliant idea – a device mounted in the vehicle that tracks driver’s eyes to make sure that he is focused on the road.
The device has an infrared camera that is constantly monitoring the eyes of the person sitting behind the wheel. When it notices, that the driver got distracted from being focused on the road, it quickly indicates to look back on the road by lighting a red diode on the steering which is followed by a gentle chime. But if the device sees no interaction from the driver, it could even perform an emergency stop. In case of a crash, the camera records the last couple of seconds to make the investigation about the crash easier.
Engineers of this invention have thought everything through – even if you are wearing glasses, polarized sunglasses etc., the device is still going to be able to monitor where you look.
Actually, I’m starting to feel a bit invigilated.. but BMW claims, that “BMW’s approach to self-driving systems is not about taking away the driving experience, but augmenting it with technology, X5 product manager Michael Baxley told Automotive News.” – fair enough, I guess that time is going to answer this question.