Ford Motor Group have developed a technology which can beam billboard adverts straight onto your car’s infotainment screen, and safety campaigners are rightly concerned.
Apart from the fact that annoying pop-up adverts are best left on internet browsers, the intrusive and distractive adverts are clearly an accident waiting to happen.
Ford have used a hot-dog stand as an example of what the in-car adverts might look like, suggesting that car users often don’t have the time to take in roadside billboards, so what better way to gain recognition then to flash them on your car screen, with website links included!
“The driver and/or passenger has a limited amount of time to obtain information from the billboard located near the road as the vehicle approaches and passes the billboard,” said the Ford patent.
“In some instances the driver or passenger may miss information of the advertisement on the billboard.”
Unsurprisingly the idea has been met with disdain from safety experts. Speaking to The Sunday Times, Matthew Avery, director of research at Thatcham Research said the tech would be problematic if it was employed in a non-autonomous car.
“We have a lot of concerns over the use of media on screens at the moment, and I suppose there’s more of a concern with this intermediate step that the government is talking about. I think anything in that situation, that encourages the driver to be distracted, is worrying,” he told driving.co.uk.
Avery did see advantages for full autonomous vehicles though and was not totally against the idea, saying: “In terms of an automated vehicle — and they are just around the corner — I don’t see a problem with it. In fact, it’s almost what we’d expect.
“There’s even talk about using the driver monitoring camera that’s looking at where you’re looking, to understand what you’re looking at, to see what’s interesting to you. There’s an awful lot of potential in this technology.”