Falling asleep at the wheel and driving drowsy are major issues for the transportation industry, and a couple of companies are looking to wearables to alleviate the problem. One, which we’ve written about, is the SmartCap monitoring system, developed in Australia. Another is an app for the Apple Watch being developed by PeopleNet, a company specializing in fleet management systems.
The PeopleNet app alerts by “tapping” the driver’s wrist, so the driver doesn’t need to look away from the road. The app can also alert the driver when he or she has exceeded a set speed limit and when a turn is coming up. From Transport Topics:
“You can get data to the driver in a nonobtrusive way,” said Randy Boyles, senior vice president of mobile strategy at PeopleNet. “If I’m using a phone, I have a tendency to want to look at that phone and see how much farther down the road I’m turning. With the watch, it’s just going to tap me to say, ‘Here’s the turn.’”
The watch face can also show work information, such as time on shift, and monitor heartrate. The Apple Watch app is part of PeopleNet’s recently introduced ConnectedDriver applications, which support Apple and Android smartphones.