Oliver Haslam·

Tesla Is Watching For Your Yawns And Blinks

Driving while tired can be a recipe for disaster but Tesla is taking things a step further by starting to monitor how drowsy drivers are — by capturing whether they yawn or blink.

There has been a suggestion for some time now that Tesla doesn’t make full use of the technology available to it, including the in-car camera.

Now, a hacker who has found features in Tesla’s software ahead of release has shared information about what appears to be new driver monitoring technology.

“Looks like Tesla is planning a big boost to (camera based) driver monitoring,” the tweet says. “They are now tracking additional things like how many yawns the driver had recently, how many blinks and how long they were.” It’s thought that this information will all be used to try and figure out how drowsy a driver may be.

The feature looks set to be used when the person is actively driving, not just when Autopilot is active.

It isn’t clear yet what Tesla will do if it decides that the driver isn’t fit to continue driving, but that will likely be the most interesting aspect of all of this.

Of course, if Tesla had managed to get Full Self-Driving to market it could engage that feature automatically if the requirement is there. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case right now but it could be in the future.

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