Off The Cuff

Toyota To Make “Smart” Cars For Elderly

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, It Ain't Sorted, So What, News And More Stuff, Odds And Ends on Dec 19 2007

Welcome back!

Toyota is teaming up with the developer of “Brain Age” to come up with a smart car that is going to supposedly help the elderly be able to continue driving. The word is “safety”. Thing is, I am not all that sure that safety is what they really have in mind. The idea is to monitor brain activity and the emotions as well in order to keep the driver safe.

Here’s the problem I see. The monitoring of brain activity and emotional activity is all well and good but because they plan on having the car react to such activity, it seems to me that they could potentially have the car going the opposite of what it should do. For instance, they are saying that the car would slow down if the driver is apparently hitting the gas too much for no apparent reason. And how is the car going to know whether this is a real situation or the person reacting to something?

I do not believe that this is a safe situation. I can envision the car actually putting someone into danger rather than taking them out of it with this type of technology since, regardless of how much a computer can learn, humans are going to react irrationally. But it may also be a situation that has not been thought about and programmed into the brain of the car. This needs a whole lot more thought and testing before this idea can possibly be safe enough, if it ever is.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!