Every year thousands of accidents are the result of drivers falling asleep behind the wheel. Ford’s new Driver Alert safety system is giving motorists in Europe the technology that could be a real lifesaver.
“Driver fatigue is a serious problem and one that can affect anyone,” said Ford engineer Margareta Nieh, who helped develop Driver Alert and is an expert on drowsy driver behavior. “When drivers become drowsy they tend to drift off line as they lose concentration and then make sudden corrective steering inputs. What we’ve developed is a Driver Alert system that picks up on these erratic driving movements by detecting sideways yaw.”
Using advanced technology and sophisticated algorithms; Ford’s Driver Alert analyzes driver performance and issues a warning if the driver shows signs of drowsiness or erratic steering. A small forward-facing camera connected to an on-board computer is mounted on the back of the rear-view mirror. The camera is trained to identify the lane markings on both sides of the vehicle and predicts where the vehicle should be in relation to them. If markings are detected only on one side of the roadway, the camera will continue to function.
As the vehicle travels along the road, the computer looks at the markings ahead and predicts where the car should be positioned relative to the lane markings. Then it measures where the car actually is and if there is a significant difference, a warning is sounded by the system. First there is a soft warning that will pop up in the instrument cluster as a text message, staying there for 10 seconds, as a chime sounds. If the driver continues to demonstrate drowsy behavior, a hard warning will appear that must be acknowledged by the drivers pressing the OK button. In the event that the driver does not press the button, the system can only be reset by stopping the car and opening the driver’s door.
Source: AutomotiveDiscovery.com
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