A blood sugar monitor for diabetics is in development to perform a similar service to, for instance, the parents of a diabetic child in the back of their car.
"More older people will be driving cars in the future," Ford's boss of the company's key research facility in Aachen in Germany told a Forum on automotive technology and distraction in Dublin. "There's a lot of consumer interest in ageing drivers," Dr Pim van der Jagt said, "so it is important that we are researching what systems we can bring to the vehicle to support them."
Dr van der Jagt noted that there are regular occurrances of people having heart attacks while driving, resulting in them impacting with other cars or buildings. "One recent case in Germany involved a car driven directly into a gas station, which had significant implications."
He suggested a future where remote control could be taken of a car where the driver had become unable to continue driving because of a health issue.
It's not just emergency matters, though, which are relevant to the technlogy. It's about productive use of time.
"Some people spend three hours a day in their car. Spending on medical monitoring devices is exploding. If somebody can do the tests in their car which they would normally have to do at home, it's just an example of many things that you can do in your car while commuting."
(This is one of a series of stories we are running based on the 2013 IMWA/Continental Forum.)
