if you drive badly the car will drive for you

I driver assistance systems more modern ones help us every day to drive in the “cleanest” way possible, maintaining trajectories, distances and checking blind spots for us. A significant help which, however, leads to a very important question: what happens to all the data analyzed by these assistants while driving?

The answer is that, in the not too distant future, they could be used to analyze our ability to drive and decide whether to deactivate the steering wheel and pedals and use them instead. Science fiction? Perhaps not too much given that Google recently filed a patent for a system with these characteristics. Here are the first details.

Always monitor the driver

The tech giant recently released a patent application through its autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo. In the beyond 25 pages in the file we read that the company’s final objective with this system would be to create software able to monitor all driver assistance functions and associated equipment.

The information collected by the systems, therefore, would be elaborate and evaluated to determine whether or not the user is a bad driver and apply, where necessary, some important ones corrective actionssuch as visual and audible alerts but also get to the point of warn other cars nearby and the police voluntarily that a “dangerous driver” is on the road.

Finally, another possibility would be that these systems begin to take control of the car for an indeterminate period of time.

Self-adaptive systems

But that’s not all. In the long document, in fact, Google also specified other less extreme examples of how this technology could be used. For example, if the driver were to make excessively poor decisions while driving, the car could perform calibration test to make sure all assistants are properly active.

Then he could also learn it driving style specific to an individual over time and use it as a baseline to determine if something is wrong in certain surroundings. In any case, it is not yet clear when and if this system will actually arrive on the cars of today or tomorrow.