Road Rage May Be Thing of the Past with New Cars' Calming Device

As I've said (more than) once here, I'm prey to road rage.

 But, according to smartplanet.com, some day soon my car may be able to talk me out of it.

 Charlie Osborne writes that they may come equipped with "emotion detectors," not too far off in the future.  

 What is that, you say?  

 If road rage is detected, the system can then work "to limit a vehicle's speed, or flash and sound a warning [..] to calm down," according to Gizmodo, Osborne reports.

He adds that Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), the one behind this, has developed an in-car emotion detector which can tell when we are at the boiling point.

"After teaming up with automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen, the team invented an emotion detector which uses an infrared camera that can detect a driver's stress levels. In particular, emotions related to anger or disgust are of interest as markers of "road rage" -- where anger has the potential of getting in the way of safe driving," Osborne writes.

So what does this mean for me and you?  Unfortunately, it's not quite as close as some would have you believe.  It's still under development and its accuracy in judging emotions is, well, still a ways off.

Would people buy this device?  I sort of enjoy my road rage, it gives me a spurt of adrenaline when I'm driving my son and his friend to school or soccer practice or the grocery store for Fritos.  But I'm ashamed to say that I have come close to danger being a rageaholic on the road so this probably would be a very good thing for me.

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