Your New Volvo Will Soon Call The Cops On You If It Thinks You’ve Been Drinking
Swedish Volvo has always been synonymous with safety in the automotive branch. Now, the Swedish automaker is taking stunning steps to push the borders between “safety features” and “big brother” with proactive safety systems in its vehicles. These systems will soon take control of your car if it notice what it “judge” to be an impaired or distracted human driver.
To achieve this control over incapacitated drivers, Volvo will soon equip its cars with interior cameras to monitor and evaluate the responsiveness of driver, in what the automaker is positioning as a hope to combat against drunk and distracted drivers. If a driver is deemed impaired, the vehicle’s autonomous safety systems will intervene on various levels and also “call the authorities”, according to Motor 1.
Henrik Green, senior vice president for research and development at Volvo said: “When it comes to safety, our aim is to avoid accidents altogether rather than limit the impact when an accident is imminent and unavoidable. In this case, cameras will monitor for behaviour that may lead to serious injury or death.”
The company hasn’t released specific details on how the interior cameras will work. The vehicle will also “monitor steering input and recognize excessive weaving or wandering.” If the vehicle senses a distracted or impaired driver, it could limit the car’s speed and even bring the car to a stop autonomously in a safe manner.
Interior facing cameras are currently only available on a couple of vehicles, including Tesla and some models of Mazda and Subaru, among a few others. The data from cameras are generally run through image recognition software to try and determine whether or not a driver is paying attention, looking at their cell phone, or perhaps even getting sleepy.
