Soon on-board artificial intelligence to monitor the ability of seniors to drive in Japan?

Faced with the growing number of deaths linked to the inability of seniors to drive, Japan has raised its voice. Not only do they have to regularly pass capacity tests, but they could soon also be monitored by an AI in their car.

While the European Parliament is working on a directive which would make a medical examination every fifteen years compulsory for older drivers, in Japan, checks on the abilities of senior motorists have existed for a long time. It must be said that the problem of seniors behind the wheel is a subject that often comes up in the news. There are regularly fatal accidents involving a very elderly person who recognizes that they have lost control of their vehicle or that they have confused the brake and accelerator pedals. In the latest police statistics, over-75s were responsible for 17% of all fatal road accidents in the country. This is a proportion that increases year after year.

For several years, the country has therefore imposed medical examinations on elderly people who want to continue using their vehicles. If you are 75 years old, in the six months before your license is renewed, you must take cognitive tests that check that you are still able to drive safely. These are essentially tests of memory and ability to locate oneself in space and time. If these tests show that you have no problems, we will renew your license. If the tests show a risk of dementia or deficiency, your license is suspended until a more complete analysis.

Insurance costs adapted to the risk represented?

And the authorities would now like cars to be able to directly see if drivers are suffering from Alzheimer’s, for example. For the moment, there is no law or regulation on this subject but there are initiatives from several private transport companies. In recent days, the large taxi company Kokusai has, for example, agreed to install, inside some of its cars, control sensors which monitor the quality of driving of drivers over 65 years old. These systems, which were designed with the company NTT Data, analyze different driving phases and compare them, using artificial intelligence programs, to large quantities of data.

They will, for example, monitor the moments when a driver brakes or accelerates. Does his reaction take place on time, or too late, compared to normal? Why did he brake suddenly on a particular avenue when the GPS shows that traffic is flowing at that time? Lots of factors will be analyzed and this will make it possible to spot the first signs of slightly abnormal driving. And thus to offer the driver to carry out more detailed cognitive tests.

Ultimately, these control systems could concern all other drivers, that’s NTT Data’s idea. She would like to market these systems so that they reach more and more drivers. This will take years. But the company is thinking, for example, of selling it to insurance companies. They could offer these live checks to their older customers. And the cost of contracts could change depending on your choice to accept this monitoring or not.