I'm sure everyone reading this (the few and the proud!) have had this happen, or at least something similar; you're driving home late at night (my worst experience was while driving home from a U2 concert at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse) and you start to get tired. You do the head bob and wonder how long you actually closed your eyes for. You reach for the volume knob on the radio and crank it up. Then you reach for the button on the door to slide the window down and get a blast of fresh air hoping these two things will keep you awake for the hour or so you have left to drive. Your passengers are FAST asleep and the next service area on the Thruway is at least another 30 miles. Time to pull over and take a nap? Well, current Mercedes-Benz models will tell you exactly that. They have a new safety feature called ATTENTION ASSIST which monitors the driver so they don't get into dangerous situations.
Our Sales Manager at the Mercedes-Benz Center at Keeler Motor Car currently drives a Benz that has this feature and it came in handy for him. He was driving back from PA one weekend, started dozing off when the alarm went off and popped a Coffee Icon on his display panel. He said it could have saved his life as his car was starting to veer off to the right lane. Below is the Press Release from Mercedes-Benz on this very cool new feature:
For National Sleep Awareness Week, Mercedes-Benz Explains Why Preventing Drowsy Driving Accidents Before They Happen Is Next Safety Frontier
MONTVALE, N.J., March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- It's no secret that Americans do not get enough sleep. This isn't just a health issue; it's also a public safety issue. Recent studies show that drowsy driving leads to 100,000 accidents in the U.S. each year, more than drunk driving. During a panel discussion at the National Sleep Foundation's Sleep Health and Safety 2010 Conference recently held in Washington, D.C., a Mercedes-Benz executive explained that in order to prevent these accidents and advance safety technology into the future, you must look to the past.
Sascha Simon, head of advanced product planning for Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA), said, "Moving forward means going backward in time. When people think about safety, they think about passive safety features like airbags that are designed to mitigate the impact of collisions. The other aspect is active safety - technology like traction control and handling dynamics that help enable vehicles to avoid collisions. The next dimension is helping drivers avoid the situations that can lead up to collisions. The Mercedes-Benz ATTENTION ASSIST™ system monitors drivers so they don't get into dangerous situations in the first place. This is accident prevention at its best because it can help stop accidents before they happen."
Simon explained that the Mercedes-Benz ATTENTION ASSIST™ uses an algorithm to produce an individual driver profile that recognizes typical patterns of behavior and then compares that profile with current data from sensors to detect the driver's transition from a state of alertness to a state of tiredness -- with 70 parameters measured in total. Over the course of several years of drowsy driving research, company scientists observed several consistent behaviors during early stages of drowsiness behind the wheel, including trouble steering a precise course in their lane and making minor steering corrections both quickly and abruptly.
The in-vehicle sensors used in ATTENTION ASSIST™ can detect unintentional lane departures, delayed reaction times coupled with over-corrective steering as well as driver inactivity. That data is then combined with information detailing the time of day and the length of time the driver has been behind the wheel. When drowsy driving is detected, ATTENTION ASSIST will sound an alarm and offer a visual warning in the form of a coffee cup, displayed in the vehicle's instrument cluster.
Click here to read the article in full.
Source: Mercedes-Benz USA
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