BMW and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research are involved in a new project titled “SmartSenior – Intelligent services for senior citizens.” The goal of the project is the development of intelligent technology which recognizes and assists senior citizens in emergency road situations. BMW is working on a safety system called Emergency Stop Assistant that will sense medical dangers, such as those associated with heart attacks, stroke and diabetes. Once an emergency is detect (through sensors that monitor vital signs disbursed throughout the car) the system will switch to an autonomous driving mode to safely stop the vehicle out of harm’s way.
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Tags: BMW, car, diabetes, emergency, german, heart attack, safety, senior citizens, stroke
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Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
June 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
What a completely dreadful idea! Rather than reassuring senior drivers that somehow this new technology will allow them to drive even longer than they should by miraculously catching their heart attacks, strokes, or demented behaviours in time to safely stop the vehicle – let’s get seniors educated to give up their vehicles EARLIER not later, the very safest thing to do.
My 81 year old mother, with dementia and a variety of other serious health conditions, had to be literally forced kicking and screaming to give up her car keys even though she was clearly a menace on the roads. Nobody – driver nor pedestrian – was safe when she was behind the wheel. If she had had technology like this in her car last year, we never would have been able to get her off the road.