If you own a new car, you must have experienced some new form of car safety technology, from automatic braking to lane assist, cruise control, or even semi-autonomous driving.

While all these technologies can help you avoid accidents resulting from external factors of vehicle operation, they may not help internal control factors like road rage, which are equally dangerous.

While you may want to justify some anger on the road, road rage can and has resulted in injuries and even deaths. But this may be a thing of the past if technologies that can detect road rage in drivers become a standard in all new cars.

How Big Is the Road Rage Problem?

As the American population grows, more cars are getting on the road. More cars on the roads mean more congestion and extended times in traffic, creating the perfect setting for a road rage storm.

According to NHTSA’s road rage statistics, driver’s rage has been responsible for over 300 deaths since 2013. Additionally, a recent survey by the Zebra shows that over 82% of respondents admitted to having committed acts of road rage.

These include acts like yelling, honking aggressively, making rude hand gestures, speeding, cutting off other drivers, and tailgating. At other times road rage has involved guns.

Using Tech to Tame the Road Rage Beast

The Huawei Movement Tracking System

In 2019, Huawei patented a system that the company believes could answer the ever-increasing road rage problem on American roads.

The technology depends on cameras and biometric sensors that detect changes in blood pressure, facial gestures, hand movements, speech, etc., to determine the level of rage in a driver.

Based on what the system detects, it then helps mitigate the outcomes of the rage by slowing down the vehicle automatically or bringing it to a complete stop if it deems the driver’s rage poses a danger to themselves and other road users.

Jaguar Land Rover Mood Monitoring

Jaguar Land Rover has a mood monitoring system in development and is set to be incorporated into their vehicles soon. The mood detection system relies on AI to detect facial expressions that indicate rising tempers.

This technology works by nipping the changes in the driver’s mood before it gets out of hand to result in acts of road rage. It achieves this by introducing subtle changes in the car to cool down the driver, such as adjusting the car’s ambient light, adjusting the vehicle’s AC to a much cooler temperature, and playing the driver’s favorite tunes.

The good thing about the Jaguar Land Rover technology is that it combines AI and ML to get better with time which helps create better results based on driver’s preferences.

RoadWayve’s LED Communicator

RoadWayve’s LED communicator is another popular technology helping tame road rage. Unlike the two above that focus on the drivers, this tech focuses on clarifying mistakes in communication that could be misconstrued as road rage while they are not.

For example, a driver can veer off the lane slightly but not intentionally. Because the other driver has no way of knowing their intentions, they could interpret the action as an act of road rage and potentially trigger road rage from the other driver.

With RoadWayve’s LED communicator, you can have a way of communicating your intentions or even apologize for your actions to ease tensions.

The system is mounted on the rear windshield of a car and uses an LED display to communicate intent to the rear driver through a smartphone app that features simple interphase that ensures it doesn’t cause a distraction.

It also features voice commands, so you do not have to touch your phone to make custom communication with the other driver, such as saying I am sorry, or thank you.