Toyota's New Eyelid-Monitoring System Wakes Up Sleepy Drivers
Are you the type who doesn't know when it's time to quit? The kind who will keep driving for 20-odd hours straight stopping only to fill up the car's tank and ... well ... empty yours? If so, you're a danger to yourself and those around you. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 100,000 reported crashes a year are due to drowsiness, resulting in 1,550 deaths. Luckily, some help is on the way from Toyota, which is coming up with a new, more advanced way to prevent driver sleep with a system that will act like an alarm clock if you close your eyes.
Toyota already has a so-called "Driver Monitoring System" in its latest Lexus LS models. The system uses a camera on the steering column to detect if you are paying attention. If it detects that you're not paying attention, the current system will emit an alarm and even hit the brakes automatically when proximity sensors in the car think an impact is likely.
This latest enhancement will take that system a step further by actually detecting whether or not your eyes are open. If those eyelids start to get droopy, an alarm will sound, and, again, the system will jump in and attempt to decelerate the car automatically. Toyota expects to be installing this in cars in the next couple of years.
Now if only the system would automatically dispense Red Bull (or your energy drink of choice), or maybe just take over the driving entirely and let you curl up in the back seat. That, at least, is still a several years down the road.
From Crave
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