Apple Patents A Way To Keep Drivers Alert In Self-Driving Cars

One of the perks of self-driving cars is that, well, it drives itself. This means that in theory, you could be doing something else while the car is being driven. However, this is often not advised because there could be situations where it might need human intervention and if you’re distracted, then it could lead to disastrous consequences.

Apple thinks that they might have an answer to that problem, and according to a patent discovered by AppleInsider, it seems that Apple might have come up with a way to keep drivers alert even in a self-driving vehicle. This will come in the form of notifications and alerts that will prompt users on their devices that they have linked to their car.

As you can see in the diagram above, it shows how an iPad (or an iPhone) could be used to display alerts to the driver as the car drives itself, letting them know of what’s happening around them, like when the light turns green, obstacles on the road, and so on. This is under the presumption that the driver could be using their device while they drive, meaning that these alerts will most certainly grab the attention of the driver.

Apple had previously introduced a do-not-disturb feature in iOS where if it detects the driver is driving, it will turn off notifications to prevent any unwanted distractions.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Transportation
Tags: iPad, iPhone, Patent, Self-Driving Cars