A Car for Distracted Driving
Posted in: Accessory
Driving, as we all know, requires complete and total attention. When operating a complex machine shuttling along at 60 miles per hour, it’s not only necessary for the driver to be totally and fully alert, but it’s also necessary for public safety. According to one articled posted on New York State’s SafeNY site, “The state of drowsiness itself is a significant impairment while driving and has been shown in several studies to be as dangerous as driving drunk. In driving performance testing, 17 hours of sustained wakefulness was equivalent to driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.05%.”
But drowsiness is just one of many issues that can affect driving. The ignition interlock device is designed for drunk driving, but what about everything else? A baby crying in the backseat. A chatty seatmate. A funny joke on the radio. A ringing phone (even if you don’t stop to pick it up). In most of our lives these days, we live with plenty of distractions, and those distractions don’t go away when we start driving
An article in Wired pointed me to a new system that’s intended to deal with these distractions: the Attention Powered Car. A collaboration between the EEG company Emotiv and Western Australia’s Royal Automobile Club, the car slows down when it detects distraction.
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