This idea will allegedly detect irregular heartbeats and slow the car down. Uh, there are many, many folks out there with irregular heartbeats who aren’t having heart attack. Why not just sell a car that comes with a cardiologist on-board?
Toyota’s new steering wheel could prevent heart attacks
Contact sensors are located at the “10 and 2 position” on the steering wheel.
Heart attacks can happen anywhere at any time — even while driving. That’s why Toyota is working on a steering wheel with contact sensors that can automatically slow a car down if it senses any irregular heart activity.
Why heart rate sensors in a steering wheel? Because adding more airbags won’t save you from going into cardiac arrest during freak accident.
Although there is no info as to when the steering wheels with the built in heart monitors will make it into shipping cars, the Independent speculates that the wheel could be used for more than just slowing down the car.
In theory, the steering wheel could also beam “real-time” to a medical center or alert emergency teams at a nearby hospital that a heart-failure has occurred and that there may be an accident or an impending one.
Similarly, Ford is also working on a seat with a built-in heart rate monitor. It looks like heart rate sensors will be the car’s next must-have, just like the GPS was five years ago.
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Hi Dr. Steve,
I hardly know where to start in responding to this goofball idea. There is simply no limit to the number of products, drugs, devices that are being developed to separate us from our money and feed our neurotic fears.
I suggest that anybody THAT worried about having a heart attack while driving should not be driving in the first place. Or what about the person with what’s known as “regular irregular” occasional and benign heart flips – is their car going to suddenly come to a stop in the middle of the highway during rush hour traffic? And besides, if you’re the driver who always keeps hands on the ’10 and 2′ steering wheel position, you are likely too old to be driving anyway (according to my grown children, that is).
Here in Lotus Land, we have news this week of a horrific car accident involving an 80-year old woman who killed a man and seriously injured five others who were sitting at a picnic table outside the Victoria airport when her car (allegedly modified with hand brakes/controls) went out of control at very high speed while leaving the short-term parking lot. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/07/29/bc-victoria-airport-crash.html
We don’t know yet whether her loss of control was due to a medical crisis like heart attack – but what possible good would Toyota’s steering wheel sensors have done during a horrific accident like this that happened in mere seconds?
Just yesterday, I received a news release from a U.S. company who has invented some kind of (as yet unapproved) implantable cardiac alarm advice that apparently can be put into the chests of those who are worried about heart attack. The device starts vibrating when it detects coronary ischemia. Really? Seriously? Unlike pacemakers or ICDs, this thing doesn’t do anything but vibrate and ring an alarm in the hand-held remote control device you’re supposed to be carrying at all times.
Maybe we can just surgically implant Toyota’s EKG sensors while we’re at it…. Or here’s a better idea: get out of the damned car and start walking for better heart health.
Cheers,
C.