A Drowsiness Detector for Motorists

Most of us have been in this situation. You’re driving along and your thoughts wander off momentarily, when all the sudden you realize that your car is slowly veering into the adjacent lane. You quickly get a jolt of adrenaline as you straighten up your wheel. And this pattern will repeat until you get home, get coffee, or get into a car accident. Even when you’re not consciously tired this pattern will occur to a lesser extend (weaving on the road). It would be easy enough, I think, to detect this wobble pattern and distinguish it from normal turns on the road (the latter generally being much less abrupt). When the car detects that the amplitude of this wobble is larger than some threshold, is should turn on a warning light and/or a buzzer. Realizing that you’re drowsy will probably be enough for most drivers to do something about it. State law might eventually mandate installing tamper-proof light indicators, so that other drivers could be warned that there’s a drowsy driver on the road. Drivers would probably resist such a law, but it would be a huge improvement to road safety if it would be done.