Mercedes' E-Class to get Attention Assist, still won't need assistance in getting your attention

We first caught wind of Mercedes Benz's Attention Assist system just over a year ago, but new details have emerged that pin the E-Class as the first model to bring the innovative tech to well-heeled buyers. By monitoring brainwaves, Mercedes' engineers were able to identify approximately 70 parameters that can be used to judge fatigue. The whole system, however, depends upon a much more accurate steering sensor that can pick up on sluggishness or other behaviors which could indicate drowsiness or distraction. When the system deems you to be sufficiently distracted or sleepy, it beeps loudly and displays a coffee cup in the dashboard, indicating that a little caffeine is the only thing standing between you and a safe journey. We're not sure how this will effect our plans to plow our $60,000 car into a snow drift because we were listening to Music for Airports, but we figure we'll find out soon enough.

[Hackettman Posted Dec 26th 2008 1:06PM]

Eh its another alert on your dash..... Having had a bunch of cadillacs and oldsmobiles and having all of them give me some kind of check engine or something else ridiculous I just cant see what another ding or blip or whatever is going to do.....

Also I mean how far off is the self driving car? I remember the last trial run they had said somewhere around 2018 or so.......

[shawnwaughgmailcom Posted Dec 26th 2008 1:32PM]

For $60k, I'd expect my butler to be far more attentive to my fatigue levels.

Better yet, why isn't my chauffeur taking care of this?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 26th 2008 7:26PM]

Yes, but I'm quite a deep sleeper - what is a loud bleep and a picture of a coffee cup going to do for me and my passengers?!