Toyota Sleepiness Sensor - Saving drowsy drivers...

According to Far East Gizmos, Toyota has been developing a system to detect when a driver is falling asleep - as indicated by the relative positions of their eyelids, seen by a driver-facing camera and interpreted by a computer. Stats on drowsy driver accidents are always scary, especially since it's not something you can test for, like breathalyzing for alcohol - you just have to trust that you can keep yourself awake! In this implementation, "if the Pre-Crash Safety System senses that a collision is imminent, and also determines that the driver's eyes are not properly open... it issues a warning earlier than it would otherwise." That's great, but it seems that a more severe wake-up technique might want to be used on a dozing-off driver even before the car detects a pre-crash situation. A pinch, a slap to the face, a bucket of cold water over the head... just wake that driver up! [via Jalopnik and Gizmodo]