With technology becoming more sophisticated by the day, it was only ever a matter of time before your car assessed your driving. But do you really want your car watching your every move and even your fitness to drive?
We’ve heard tales of self-driving cars being on the horizon for decades. All those Back to the Future-esque advancements we’d only dreamed of are coming to fruition.
We already have cars that can park themselves, maintain a safe distance behind the car in front, stop you drifting out of your lane, spot errant pedestrians and even apply the brakes if they think you’re about to crash.
Clock-watching your driving
So what’s next – cars that could start to monitor our health, our concentration and even decide for themselves whether we are safe to be behind the wheel? If the monitors decide you’re not in a fit state they could go as far as disabling the car. Nissan’s latest contribution to these developments is the Nismo smartwatch unveiled at last week’s Frankfurt Motor Show.
We’ve already seen smartwatches from Sony and Samsung which can filter the functionality of your phone onto your wrist and assess your health by counting your footsteps and tracking your blood pressure and heart rate. However, Nissan’s smartwatch could go one step further, harvesting even more of your biometric data by scanning your heart and brain.
Keeping a watchful eye on your driving
Nissan claims that the purpose of this is to identify early fatigue, monitor concentration, body temperature, hydration levels and even emotions. As well as assessing drivers’ physical wellbeing the smartwatch could keep tabs on your social media activity across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. And Nissan is far from the only car company developing technology to keep an eye on drivers’ physical state. Ford’s recent S-Max concept car introduced the ability to monitor a driver’s blood sugar level.
Other models already in showrooms, such as Lexus’s LS can detect whether your eyes are open while the Mercedes S Class can monitor your attention levels as well as the roads, vehicles and pedestrians around you. Automotive analyst Thilo Koslowski has predicted:
‘In the future, cars will automatically drive you to the nearest doctor if they sense a problem with you or your passengers.’
But do you welcome your car being able to monitor your health in addition to your driving? Would you find it helpful if your card told you it’s time to take a break or is this a technological step too far?
Loading ...
