#1191: Screenstopper

Car drivers are now beset by a large range of electronic information. GPS, radio and performance diagnostics all demand attention that might better be directed towards events on the road.

Several vehicles now have a touchscreen which provides access to all of these sources of information and entertainment…this seems like a bad idea from a road safety viewpoint. Even if mounted somewhere a driver can see it without constantly glancing down, it’s still a less than optimal solution.

Today’s invention is to equip such touchscreens with an algorithm which senses the amount of fiddling about that a user is doing. If this exceeds a certain time limit (which might decrease with the speed of the vehicle), then it would issue a warning to park -or switch off the display until velocity = zero.