New Technology Promises to Reduce Risk of Accidents from External Distractions

Distracted driving seems to be the new focus for many automakers and related companies that are busy developing technologies that can be used to reduce the risk of accidents caused by distracted and inattentive drivers. The challenge is severe, because of the various forms of distractions that can take a person’s attention away from the road. These can include internal as well as external distractions.

A new technology that has been developed by Continental targets external distractions, when a person is focusing on things outside the car. One of the biggest examples of external distractions in Texas are digital billboards. These have been found to be very distracting to motorists, because they take a person’s attention away from the road for as much as 4 seconds at a time.

Statistics have indicated that when a person’s eyes are taken away from the road for 4 seconds, it increases a person’s risk of being involved in an accident.

The Continental technology is a system that can detect when a person’s eyes have been diverted from the road, and immediately flash beams of light across the dashboard to alert the driver. The point is to get the driver to refocus his eyes back on the road, in order to reduce distractions.

It’s not clear to Houston vehicle accident lawyers how effective this technology would be in refocusing their attention on the task of driving. The technology would probably work on distractions that come from outside the car, like other cars, vehicles, and highway billboards etc. However, any kind of development in anti-distracted driving technology is welcome, because it was will spur more research in this field.