It can be hard to make sense of sensors. They’ve got a sensor for everything. Cars have sensors to help you reverse and change lanes. Light detection and ranging sensors (LiDAR) in self-driving cars emit pulsed light waves from a laser, these pulses bounce off surrounding objects and return to the sensor. The time it takes for each pulse to return to the sensor is used to calculate the distance it traveled. Sensors, sensors, everywhere.
On December 12, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), which may lead to sensors being used to eliminate drunk driving. The proposal would allow for the gathering of “information necessary to develop performance requirements and require that new passenger motor vehicles be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.”
The ANPRM sets the foundation for potential “alcohol-impairment detection technology standards in all new passenger vehicles when the technology is mature.” The ANPRM will allow for the gathering of information on the state of technology used to detect impaired driving, as well as insights into how to deploy technology safely and effectively.
In other words, standardized drunk driving sensors in all automobiles, like standardized air bags.
Sensors are saving cyclists, the latest are from Volkswagen and Ford. According to Elecktrek, the Volkswagen ID.7 has sensors that block a door from opening if a cyclist is passing by, even after the ignition is turned off for up to three minutes. Ford has a sensor that lights up an LED indicator on the side mirror and sounds a warning when an object is sensed heading into the door’s path travelling at 7 kilometres an hour or faster.
All these sensors are great. But, instead of having hundreds of different sensors, wouldn’t it be easier to have one single sensor that can sense whether someone is about to do something idiotic?
You know, a “stupid sensor.”
Then we wouldn’t need all the other sensors.
Take drunk driving sensors. There are currently three main alcohol impairment detection technologies. According to Wired, there are steering wheel-embedded sensors that “can detect levels of alcohol and carbon dioxide in a driver’s breath. Touch-based sensors in a steering wheel or other surface can use infrared lights to determine the blood alcohol content in capillaries just below the skin’s surface. Finally, there are driver-monitoring systems, “which are already common in new cars with advanced driving-assistance technologies, could use eye or head tracking to determine whether a person is likely impaired.”
A stupid sensor powered by artificial intelligence could predict if a driver was stupid enough to drink and drive even before they went to the bar. It could then shut the car off.
Most of the stupid sensor’s work would involve asking a question and then turning the automobile off.
For example:
“Is it okay to drive slowly in the passing lane?”
Yes, I often drive slowly in the passing lane. (vehicle turned off).
“Defensive driving is based on which three principles?”
Defiance, denial and derangement. (vehicle turned off).
A stupid sensor could detect distracted driving and use a robot arm to slap the phone out of the driver’s hand.
In the United States, 13,384 people were killed in 2021 in drunk driving crashes. NHTSA estimates the cost of drunk driving fatalities at $280-billion in lost wages, lost quality of life and medical costs. That’s just the cost of one sort of stupidity (drunk driving). Imagine the cost in lost wages, lost quality of life, medical costs and other sundry damages caused by the total of all vehicular stupidity? It’s beyond calculation.
If stupidity is too ambitious a target, we could implement “standardized rage sensors.” If the rage sensor detects an angry driver, then the vehicle could pull over and the cookie sensor dispenser would engage and give the driver a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie (all vehicles equipped with a “rage sensor” would also have “cookie sensor dispenser”).
If we’re bright enough to invent all these sensors, we should be smart enough to invent a sensor that warns us when we’re about to do something stupid.
We need it, especially around the holiday season.
In Saskatchewan, officers issued 1,347 traffic charges during Canada Safe Driving Week (Dec. 1 to 7). Of those, there were 97 charges and 22 warnings for cellphone use while driving. On Dec. 13, the Ontario Provincial Police nabbed a driver going nearly 200 kilometres an hour on a highway in Hamilton. Why? He told police he was speeding in order get a passenger home who was suffering from a stomach ache.
Sounds like a job for the stupid sensor.
Andrew Clark