【时文选读】Halting Drink-driving 驾驶员智能监控：叫停酒驾新方法

【时文选读】Halting Drink-driving 驾驶员智能监控：叫停酒驾新方法

The message couldn’t be clearer: don’t drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Yet people still put themselves and others in danger by getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. Despite decades of education programmes and law enforcement, road collisions attributable to intoxicated driving remain unacceptably high. We need a better approach and we are in the middle of a technological boom that may just deliver one.

“切勿在饮酒或服药后驾车”，这道理再浅显不过，但总有些人罔顾自身与他人安危，以身试法。数十年来，交通安全方面的教育与执法并举，但因酒驾造成的交通事故率仍居高不下，令人不满。道路交通亟待更有效的安全措施，科学技术的蓬勃发展或许能献上一计。

Seat belts and airbags have dramatically reduced the number of lives lost on roads. However, they do little to prevent the cause of crashes. Someone dies every 25 seconds globally due to road traffic injuries, and one in five of the drivers involved will test positive for alcohol following the collision.

安全带和安全气囊极大地减少了道路交通事故中的死亡人数，但就预防车祸而言，它们能起到的作用微乎其微。全球每25秒就有一人死于道路交通伤害，其中五分之一的肇事司机在随后的酒精检测中呈阳性。

Some cars already have intelligent driver monitoring systems that help to reduce deaths by human error, such as inattention. These use cameras to monitor drivers’ alertness.When there is a deviation from the behaviour it has

been trained to recognize, such a system can either warn the driver or take complete control of the vehicle to stop a collision from occurring. These systems may reduce collisions by up to 20 per cent.

目前，一些车辆已配备驾驶员智能监控系统，可减少因注意力不集中等人为过失造成的事故死亡。这些汽车内设摄像头，可监控驾驶员是否保持行车警觉性。若监控识别到系统外的驾驶行为，可向驾驶员发出警报，或完全控制驾驶以避免碰撞发生。装有该系统的车辆能将碰撞率减少20%。

Now, a second wave of intelligent driver monitoring technology is on its way. Internal cameras can be combined with other biometric sensors, such as heart rate monitoring or skin conductibility, to determine a driver’s internal state in real time. In other words, a car could determine when its driver is impaired by drugs or alcohol.

现在，新一代驾驶员智能监控技术正在研发之中。车内摄像头将与其他生物传感设备结合，如心率检测、皮肤传感器等，以便实时确认驾驶员的身体情况。换句话说，车辆本身就可以判断驾驶员是否受到药物或酒精的影响。

These technologies can already spot certain behaviours that are hallmark features of intoxication. For example, alcohol significantly impairs alertness and attentiveness, which such systems can detect, and the more someone drinks, the more pronounced these effects are.

这类技术现已能识别出酒驾的部分典型表现。比如，饮酒后人的警觉性和注意力大幅下降，饮酒量越大，受影响越显著，这些都能被系统识别到。

Therefore, it might be possible to retrain such systems to identify and monitor the individual “impairment signature” for a range of other substances that are known to negatively affect driving. Creating individual profiles will help to differentiate between a driver who has taken legal prescription drugs needed to treat a medical condition and someone who has consumed illegal drugs. Ideally, this information would be used to automatically block the person from driving.

因此，未来很可能对系统进行更新训练，就已知对行车有负面影响的物质进行识别和监控，形成驾驶员个人化的特征档案。个人档案的创建将有助于区分药物影响，有的驾驶员服用的是治疗疾病的合法处方药，而有的则使用了违禁药品。理想情况下，这些数据会被用来自动阻止某些驾驶员行车。