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E-nanny on board

Japanese car maker Subaru has developed a spellbinding innovation; it’s the Driver Monitoring System (DMS) that virtually looks over your shoulder like a pesky Big Brother! This DMS uses a camera and infrared LED discreetly mounted on top of the central information display. It watches your eyes and head movements for signs of distractions or drowsiness. The use of infrared in the system means that it won’t be prevented from doing its job even if you’re wearing sunglasses.

Even before you get on the road, your car is already using facial recognition technology. In fact, the system can store up to five driver profiles and as soon as it recognises you, it automatically sets the climate control, electric seat position and mirror angle to match the last time you drove.

That’s a huge relief as there’s no need to reset all of that manually.

You need to set up your profile with your name and a picture icon, and the unit will then scan your face as you look straight ahead. A beep indicates that your profile has been stored – absolutely incredible you might say… but Subaru has all that sewn up.

So once you register yourself in the test car, which is a DMS equipped Subaru Forester e-Boxer, it quickly and reliably recognises you every time you get in.

Let’s hear it from the test driver himself: “During my time in the Subaru Forster e-Boxer, I tried to catch it out in various different ways… and it proved repeatedly that it really does know when my eyes are off the road.”

Furthermore, if one looks away instead of straight ahead for more than a few seconds, a flashing orange box on the screen of the instrument cluster reminds you to keep your eyes on the road. Seriously, how can one argue with that warning?

Yet, like an overzealous school matron, it prods you to get back to the serious business of looking straight ahead when driving – even if you do nothing more deadly than scratching your head without your hand obscuring your sight. So this incredible DMS technology can be a bit of a pain at times. But then again, nothing is perfect.

If your eyes droop from tiredness or if you were to look down (illegally) at your phone while at the wheel, the car will mute the audio and a louder shriller beep will be played with a red half-closed eye symbol and a message that says: ‘Stay Alert!’ Well, is DMS really necessary? Of course, it is! Remember that as drivers, it is our business to be as focussed as possible for our own and everyone else’s safety against the backdrop of all those horrendous fatal accidents we hear about globally. Quite a few of them occurred due to driver fatigue and other distractions whilst being at the wheel.

So when you are tired and drowsy, DMS is a watchful aid to make sure you’re not drifting off at the wheel and driving off a cliff!