3 Ways Wearable Tech Could Change Driving For The Better

It’s slowly crept up on us, but if we take a step back and look at the kind of technology we have at our disposal today, we really are living in a science fiction future, the likes of which our ancestors could barely dream of. We have access to all human knowledge in a few taps of our mobile phones, cars that drive themselves, and wearable technology that can do everything from keep check on your health to give you directions.

It’s the latter that’s had me thinking recently. You see, more and more people are buying into smart technology attached to your watch, and many gym goers now rely on fitness bracelets that track their progress. Augmented reality glasses are perhaps the most fascinating, able to overlay graphics and information on to the world in front of you.

With the technology slowly moving from expensive gimmicks to genuinely usable products, we take a look at how this technology could improve driving forever.

1. Augmented navigation

No matter how good your navigation system’s audio instructions are, you’ll always have to take a quick look at the bird’s eye view of approaching turns to get a good idea of what’s coming up. This is particularly true of big cities like London, where it’s not always clear exactly which exit you should be taking.

Imagine wearing glasses that overlaid the information in front of you, precisely directing you along the path you need to travel. You’d never need to be distracted by audio commands or looking away from the road again. There have been a few different proposals for how this could work; Mini’s own goggle concept uses large arrows to point you in the right direction, much like street racing games have done for years, while an alternative is to have a thick ‘cable’ running above the road for you to follow.

The latter could work brilliantly for those of us who use satellite navigation systems as a kind of virtual co-driver, checking the screen while hooning unfamiliar back roads to get an idea of what’s coming. No matter how thick the bushes and trees that line the road and obscure your view, having a cable overhead would let you know exactly what sort of corner is coming next.

As hipster gym freaks will tell you, you can get watches that measure your heartbeat. These could be incredibly useful if, say, you suffer a medical emergency behind the wheel. Your watch would be able to notify you if it notices something is awry, or contact emergency services should it realise you’re incapacitated, and eventually it might even be able to communicate with the car to bring you safely to a stop.

Furthermore, it could give out your exact location to responders, avoiding tragic stories like this one, in which a young couple died after crashing their car and weren’t found for three days.

In fact, Nismo is already working on this potential for its Concept Watch using the heart rate monitor to receive live biometrics, which will mean it can recognise when fatigue is setting in. Knowing that an endurance racer needs to be swapped out before their lap times even start to drop could save valuable seconds over the course of a race, or even avoid a fatigue-induced crash.

3. Plug-and-play safety technology

Like it or loathe it, automated safety features are becoming more prevalent, and they’re almost certainly here to stay. The Volvo XC90, for example, has a ludicrous number of safety features, however it’ll set you back in the region of £50,000 for the pleasure of that security. Some people just cannot afford that, and that’s when wearable technology could provide the answer.

Imagine plug-and-play safety technology, where all you have to do is purchase a camera that connects to your glasses and makes you aware of potential threats as you drive along. That’s the dream for Harman, which is integrating Google Glass into its Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. The bonus of this is that it can either be bought by customers and retro-fitted to older cars, or can be offered as a factory option on less expensive new cars that wouldn’t normally be able to soak up the cost of such technology.

Other stuff

Most manufacturers now offer something in the way of a connected app, whether it’s for wearable tech or your smartphone. These are typically along the lines of Mercedes’ Digital DriveStyle app, which allows owners to keep tabs on things like their car’s location and fuel level, as well as locking and unlocking doors from a distance.

The app now also has Apple Watch integration, allowing owners to map the buttons on the watch to perform functions while driving, such as changing the volume or temperature; only marginally less distracting than doing so on the centre console, but it’s progression of some kind at least.

Hyundai’s BlueLink Glassware connectivity goes one step further, integrating its existing app functions with Google Glass’s voice functionality. You can talk to your car even when you’re nowhere near it, for example to turn the engine on ahead of a journey in the cold without even needing to go outside. It’ll also sync up with your calendar, so if you’re heading to a meeting, the car will have already set the destination when you get in… apparently it’ll even check how long the journey is, and if you’re not in the car it’ll warn you that you need to leave soon to arrive on time.

The future of wearable technology, particularly in the case of augmented reality glasses, remains to be seen. There have been a few documented cases of people being charged by police for wearing them under the same local legislations that ban drivers from watching television while behind the wheel. In fact, smart watches aren’t safe either; one guy in Quebec was charged with using a handheld device while changing songs via his Apple Watch, however he claims that’s unfair because the watch is not technically handheld.

There are a lot of legal hurdles to jump before this technology enters the mainstream, but once all that’s ironed out, we reckon wearable tech could be pretty damn useful for drivers.