Recent studies show that drowsy driving represents a greater hazard than drunk driving, as the first causes 100,000 accidents annually in the U.S. During the 2010 Sleep Health and Safety Conference, recently held in Washington D.C. by the National Sleep Foundation, the German company stressed the importance of driver behavior in the area of road safety.
The Attention Assist is a system that alerts the driver when he falls asleep behind the wheel or the car performs unintended maneuvers. It uses a network of sensors that monitor up to 70 individual parameters of the driver’s behavior. This allows the application to recognize typical patterns of behavior and detect when the driver exits the normal state of awareness. The system can detect unintentional lane departures, delayed reaction times, over-corrective maneuvers and driver inactivity. The data gathered is analyzed in combination with driving session duration information. If the applications detects a state of drowsiness, it warns the driver by playing a loud sound and displaying a visual alarm on the car’s dashboard.
"Mercedes-Benz has a long history of pioneering safety features and is a leader in safety patents. ATTENTION ASSIST™ was built on existing sensor data used in our array of safety systems, including Lane Keeping Assist and Brake Assist. As we shifted our focus from the vehicle to the driver, we conducted more than 10,000 tests with 670 drivers over more than 600,000 miles to develop this innovative, next-generation technology," said Sascha Simon, head of advanced product planning for Mercedes-Benz USA.
On the U.S. market, Attention Assist is offered as a standard equipment on 2010 E-Klasse saloons, coupes & 2011 cabrio models and on the V8 and V12 versions of the S-Klasse.
Google News