Car manufacturers have been developing ways to make driving safer for years, with the latest developments being in self-driving technology and assisted driving.
There's another technology under development, however, an experimental dashboard that can keep track of what the driver is doing behind the wheel and even predict what they might do next.
The vast majority of accidents occur through driver error, with distracted driving becoming an increasingly big problem thanks to devices like the smartphone. Car manufacturers have begun testing systems that will monitor eye movement and head position, however, a study from Cornell University and Stanford shows a system that could be trained to recognize things like body language and the behavior that comes with certain movements of the car.
This kind of system could be far more helpful than simple eye tracking and could trigger a warning for problems such as a blind spot, which could help prevent many serious injuries.
The system was built using a machine-learning algorithm that is able to predict when a driver is going to change lanes with a little over 90 percent accuracy. For example, a lane change is often signaled with a glance over the driver's shoulder along with things like changes in steering, acceleration and braking.
The algorithms used were trained using 10 different people, who collectively drove around 1,180 miles in California. The researchers involved intend to make the data they collect available for free so that other researchers can use it.
It's not just about detecting when a driver is distracted, however.
"Suppose the driver is distracted for a second," said Ashesh Jain, a project lead on Brain4Cars, the project behind the research, in an interview with the MIT Technology Review. "If there's nothing in front, the car should be smart enough, and not alert the driver. It's about how you use information from all these sensors."
This kind of research could be even more important as cars become automated. This is because, in spite of cars being able to drive themselves, at least initially, drivers will still need to be able to take control of the car in some situations. If the driver is distracted by something, which they likely could be if the car is driving itself, this can take a number of seconds.
