Tech to stop drink/drug driving

VOLVO WILL FIT driver monitors, which could lead to drunk and drugged people being prevented from driving, to all models as standard from the early 2020s.

The initiative is part of the firm’s ambition to ensure zero road fatalities in new Volvos and follows the decision to introduce a 112mph top speed on all its new vehicles from 2021.

The monitoring system will be able to detect if the driver is drunk or drugged, has fallen asleep or is distracted. Mild signs of incapacity could be linked to a dashboard warning, with a phone call from Volvo’s On Call centre for more severe cases – with the potential that they could directly intervene to stop the car in extreme cases.

Volvo boss Håkan Samuelsson said he hopes the systems will spark an ethical debate. He added: “When we have the technology to see if someone is distracted or drunk, should it be their personal freedom or human right to drive the car?

“Do we have the right to tell the driver to please go home or sleep, or stop the car? That’s a discussion about how far you go on the Big Brother mentality by saying no.”

Tests are being conducted using an XC90 fitted with a battery of cameras to build up the data needed.

Cars built on the next iteration of the firm’s scalable SPA2 platform and launched in the early 2020s will be the first to have the system.

Talking about Volvo’s decision to limit the top speed of its cars, Samuelsson said: “We will come to a point where speeding is seen as bad as, say, smoking on an aeroplane, and you have to ask whether speeding is someone’s freedom or his human right, or whether we have a right to stop it.”