Cameras in your car can tell when you’re on the phone

The integration of cell phones and automobiles have now become a foregone conclusion, with even base models offering up instant bluetooth syncing, allowing drivers to make and take calls and even stream music through their automobile’s speakers.

But what if your car can tell when you’re using your phone while driving? A team from Santa Catarina University in Brazil have devised a way to do just that.

Using an amalgamation of both hardware and software, the team has devised a way to see when you’re talking on the phone while driving. They’ve achieved this by placing a small digital camera in the dashboard of a vehicle, that hones in on your face. Then, an algorithm processes the image, and if it sees what looks like hands entering the image, it assumes that you’re talking on the phone, instead of using a wireless option while driving.

Now the team hasn’t yet added a feature yet that will alert the driver to stop their reckless behavior once its identified that they’re breaking the law, but that seems like the next logical conclusion. Unless, this was devised more as a way to monitor driver behavior than actually correct it.

If this is the case, then there are some interesting implications for such devices, ones that will probably have insurance companies twiddling their fingers in delight over. Imagine you get in an accident while scratching your face, and the camera in your car thought that you were talking on the phone? An insurance company would surely love to have this piece of data to use against you in a claim dispute. Of course, this is a worst-case scenario, and there hasn’t even been any talk of when/if this technology will come to market.

Do you see this being used for driver safety? Or is installing a camera in your car just further diminishing our already shrinking privacy?

Source | Via