Your Next Chevy May Watch You Watching the Road

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It won’t be long before your car is watching you, and will know if you’re not watching the road.

General Motors is adopting technology that will track your eyes and face as you drive. The automaker has signed a deal with Seeing Machines to buy tracking devices for 500,000 vehicles during the next five years, the Financial Times reports. The technology already is used in industrial applications like trucking and mining to detect driver fatigue and distraction. It then uses that information to encourage drivers to pull over for a rest or to put down the damn phone.

Seeing Machines’ technology consists of several components, from the tracking cameras to the algorithms that detect where, and for how long, drivers are looking. GM would not comment on the matter, and it is not clear from the Times report just what GM is buying, but it’s possible to use the tech to determine where the driver is looking to within one degree of angle. With that kind of precision, it would be possible to, say, change the station by glancing at the radio or alert the driver if he’s taken more than a moment to glance at his phone.

GM appears to be following a path blazed by other automakers as they attempt to minimize distractions, increase safety, and keep us focused on the task at hand: Driving. Mercedes-Benz uses a technology called “Attention Assist” to monitor steering behavior and other parameters like the use of turn signals to determine if the driver is fatigued. Lexus uses its “Driver Monitor” system, equipped with a driver-facing camera, to watch the driver’s eyelids and determine if he is looking away from the road or even falling asleep.

The technology underscores how our vehicles are becoming increasingly aware of their surroundings, and are increasingly stepping in to save us from ourselves. Volvo’s new XC90, for example, is semi-autonomous, with auto-braking features to prevent accidents across a wide range of situations. For GM, adopting technology like eye- and face-tracking on so large a scale has the potential to save countless lives and signifies a big step toward mass-market adoption of more self-aware cars.

“Carmakers know we’re heading for a world of autonomous vehicles that do much of the thinking for us,” says Karl Brauer, an analyst with Kelly Blue Book. “In the race to get there most of them are embracing advanced technology as soon as there’s a viable business case.”

As our cars become more self-aware, the technology will continue to raise privacy issues. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is considering regulations that would require vehicles to talk to each other, potentially sharing speed, direction and other data wirelessly. For GM’s driver-tracking technology, at the moment at least, privacy-sensitive drivers will likely be able to disable the system. However, the time may come (after public acceptance, of course) that this sort of distraction and fatigue detection will be standard and required equipment—with an additional requirement that other cars be notified with a distracted or fatigued driver is in their midst.

Disabling such technology “makes it more palatable for buyers who don’t like it while still appealing to buyers who are into the latest high tech features,” says Brauer. “The goal is to ease buyers into adopting the new technology, with a full expectation that every car buyer will eventually understand and embrace it.”