LegendaryLife.com Blog

As vehicles continue to evolve in the marketplace with airbags and other passive technology to keep everybody safe during a journey, Nissan has decided to launch yet another revolutionary technology aimed squarely at the driver. Using various active and passive sensors around the driver, their new cars will gage whether a person is fit to drive at all! Yes, one day in the very near future, the car you bought might refuse to allow you to drive it because it thinks your sick!

Why is this a good thing?

Well, if somebody is sick or just plain drunk, they shouldn’t be allowed to join the road with the equivalent of a thousand pound missile. Accidents are part of life but this technology (and others like it) will make the road safer for all of us. We have regulators in cars to prevent them from going at excess speeds, we have collision avoidance systems and anti-lock breaks which all make an impact on road deaths… I think the more of these things we have the better.

Who will not like these safety systems?

Well, I can already see the discrimination lawsuits getting ready to take flight. You see, for a 20 year old male, these systems are no problem but for a 90 year old female driver, no matter how much in good shape she is, these systems will certainly lead to the end of their driving career. When a car can decide on it’s own if you are physically and mentally ready to join the road, then those with disabilities or other problems will be relegated to taking the bus or rides with friends. This is not a bad thing, I think the greater good is safe drivers and a machine is about as unbiased a mechanism to decide this… but I am sure the senior and disabilities associations will have problems with the growing control we give to technology to decide our ability to handle them.

The Bottom Line

Safety is as much a communal responsibility as an individual one.

Buzzvia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6929931.stm