News

Device Created to Alert Dozing Drivers

By Cheri Cheng | Update Date: Dec 11, 2013 10:37 AM EST

Since driving can be a dangerous task, staying awake, alert and clear-minded is very important. Despite this, people who are impaired, whether it is from a lack of sleep or fatigue, still get behind the wheel, which jeopardizes his or her own life and the lives of others. In order to prevent dozing off at the wheel, a company has created a device that would be able to detect a sleepy driver, alert the driver and prevent him or her from falling asleep. So far, several firms have agreed to install the device in their coach buses as a part of the trial.

The device known as the Fatigue Monitoring System was created by Seeing Machines, a company from Australia. The system works by using an infrared light and a camera that monitors the driver's eye movements. The device looks out for blinking frequency and driver's gaze. If the device's software algorithms detect an issue, such as diverted gaze off of the road, the system will alert the driver via vibrations implanted into the driver seat. There are other alarms that call for human assistance or intervention as well.

"What we see is that drivers learn very quickly not to be distracted from the road," Ken Kroeger, the CEO of Seeing Machines, said in a telephone interview to FOX News. "However, you can't train someone to not be tired."

Kroeger added, according to BBC News, "Coach accidents aren't that frequent, but when they do happen they are so catastrophic that they make the [newspaper] front pages and in a lot of cases it is almost the end of the coach company involved as no-one wants to ride with them anymore."

The company has teamed up with Royal Beuk, which is a Dutch coach operator firm. The company has installed the software onto two of its coach buses and has helped recruit four other coach firms to do the same. Now, Seeing Machines and the five firms will test the efficiency of the device over the next few months. During the wintertime, the coach buses will travel throughout Europe, hitting cities such as the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. The buses will reach southern parts of France, Italy and Spain during the summertime.

"There are competitor products on the market and we evaluated a few of them," Royal Beuk's research manager Marc Beuk said. "But all of the others required something from the driver. One system required them to wear a special hat, another involved special glasses hooked up to wires. This was the only device that we know of that didn't give the driver something to do - once he turns the ignition key the system boots up and it starts monitoring him."

The company stated that at the end of the nine-month trial, the company will install its device into 60-vehicles if the results are promising.

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