The Headrest That Gets Into Your Head

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We may – not too-long from today – look back fondly on the days when a headrest was just a headrest. Kind of like the way a steering wheel used to be just a steering wheel – before it became a “safety” device.

One that sometimes explodes shrapnel in your face.

But how about a headrest that gets into your head? One that houses a scanner that monitors your brainwaves – also for “safety” reasons? It is apparently in the works. A company by the name of Neumo has reportedly been “shopping” a “contactless, non-invasive way of collecting brainwave activity data and helping (car companies)  interpret it in a way that can ensure drivers stay alert and are otherwise in tip-top driving form.”

How, exactly, will this be done?

Neumo’s headrest scanner is based on a “sensor that can be mounted discreetly in the vehicle’s headrest to collect brainwaves passively from up to 12 ins. (30.5 cm) away” and a “printed-circuit-board antenna that detects the brain activity and a receiver to relay the information collected.”

Relayed to whom? Well, the car’s computer, of course.

Data gathered is crunched by Neumo’s proprietary software and scored on a 10-point scale, evaluating the driver’s level of distraction and drowsiness, state of health and well-being and the amount of workload and stress they are under.” 

Italics added.

State of health? Apparently, it’s not enough that our state of mind is to be monitored. Our cars are to be used to keep us healthy as well as “safe.”

Is it not wonderful to be so cared about by corporations – and the government? The two often go together these days. Especially as regards corporations that make cars. There was a time when they opposed this sort of thing, chiefly because it was thought that most people who bought cars opposed this sort of thing would not want to buy what the government wanted them to sell. Then, an epiphany! More money could be made anticipating what the government would want them to sell and making it part of the new cars people had no alternative but to buy  – if they wanted to buy a new car – before it was  mandated.

There was – and is – the secondary advantage of making it more difficult (by making it more costly) for putative (non-established) competitors to compete with the established car companies.

Henry Ford was able to sell his Model T for much less than other cars of the time because the government of the time did not decree that all cars must be hand-made to order, as was true of most of the other cars available prior to the introduction of the Model T.

Chevrolet came along and tried – successfully- to compete with Ford. As did many other brands of cars. It apparently did not occur to the people in charge of those brands – perhaps they lacked the audacity to advocate for it? – that competition should be forestalled by government. That regulations – in the name of “safety” – could be used to on the one hand increase their profit margins and on the other, shield them from new competitors, by making it too expensive for them to compete.

That is, to comply.

Imagine being a Henry Ford today and having to come up with the money to integrate six air bags in your prototype and make it pass muster with the federal regulatory apparat. Now you know why there is no Henry Ford today.

But is an Elon Musk.

Back to the brain scanner that will monitor your health as well as your state of mind:

“(S)cores exceeding certain thresholds would trigger vehicle features meant to regain the driver’s attention or help calm them down – such as drowsiness alerts or soothing ambient lighting and mood music. Each automaker would be able to decide how best to make use of the data in its cars and trucks.”

It is not difficult to imagine what “each automaker” might decide is the “best use” of the “data” collected. There is money in such “data” – and not just in terms of what collecting it will cost as reflected in the MSRP. The insurance mafia is also very much interested in such “data,” which can be used as a metric for mulcting. An even higher-tech iteration of the mulcting that follows from the “data” already collected regarding how fast you’re driving (and stopping) which can and is construed as aggressive driving. Your “premium” – i.e., the extortion you’re required to pay – goes up,  not because you’ve wrecked or filed a claim but because your encephalic pattern isn’t quite what it ought to be, as per “certain thresholds.”

You continued driving when you were “drowsy.”

That is, if the car permits you to continue driving when it considers you to be “drowsy,” as indicated by the “data” collected by the scanner built into your car’s headrest.

In a static demonstration in which (Neumo CEO Niall) Berkery’s office chair is retrofitted with the technology and connected via Bluetooth to his computer, the Neumo sensor detects the executive’s brain activity while the software’s algorithms break down the raw data into subset groupings based on frequency, displaying those outputs on the computer screen in a series of virtual wave meters. The individual waves indicate how close Berkery is to the state of sleep, whether he is speaking and how much work his brain is doing.”

Does it make you feel “safe”? Or does it creep you out?

Of course, there will be no way out. The “technology” will be embraced – a word often used in such contexts – by the car companies before it is even pushed by the government. The corporations having learned that there is money – and less competition – in compliance.

But, don’t worry!

“Unlocking a deeper understanding of a driver’s cognitive state can dramatically improve the driving experience, making it safer & more enjoyable.”

It is likely that we’ll one day soon be fondly remembering the days when a headrest was just a headrest.

. . .

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33 COMMENTS

  1. Our company tried right after covid, by posting a memo in an online bulletin board to suggest or recommend that people go get the covid shot and then the flu shot. There was no response. None. That about sums up how people feel about companies getting involved in monitoring peoples health.

  2. “..the Neumo sensor detects the executive’s brain activity while the software’s algorithms break down the raw data into subset groupings based on frequency, displaying those outputs on the computer screen in a series of virtual wave meters. ”

    Did the computer throw up an alert, because the CEO’s brain activity was showing just a flat line?

    Because going by the decisions routinely made by such ‘executives’ these days, there can be little doubt they are in fact walking zombies.

  3. What is this obsession with “alert” driving as determined by a computer?

    Is there some kind of scientifically proven amount of alertness that is proper for driving?

    I bet someone can be very alert to a really nice car, or a mattress duct taped to a Pinto, or a girl in a bikini driving a convertible. Not sure any of that will keep you any safer.

    Then again, why does big brother think they are responsible for my safety?
    I am far more likely to die from a fall at home. Will they be deploying bubble wrap at the bottom of my stairs?

    How many years have we been told to eat things that make us fat and risk heart attack and diabetes from the same group that wants to monitor our eye placement for safety?

    • “ What is this obsession with “alert” driving as determined by a computer?”

      Government mandated driver monitoring both here and Europen markets subject to ECE regulations.

      Must detect distracted driving, drowsy driving, and drunk driving though this last one is a contentious point that the industry doesn’t know how to meet reliably.

  4. I finally broke down and bought a new vehicle (new not as in just made, but new as in post cell phone integration of everything). A 2014 RAM 1500 eco diesel. Amazing rig, most luxurious and quiet thing I’ve ever owned, a couple Cadillacs were close. But they have chronic problems with the communist mandated emissions controls. Specifically mpg and horsepower stymied by an exhaust filter and a catalyst of sorts, with the urea injection. And even worse, they have an EGR which dumps soot back into the intake, substantially dirtying the engine.

    The solution of course is simple, the free (black) market has a plethora of delete and tune hardware.

    My point, let the sheep enjoy their chains, there are ways around this crap. Eventually when life becomes hard enough the peasants will rattle their chains, but I’m personally tired of waiting.

  5. I suppose if you just pull out the headrest the car won’t run, since the computer will sense that. We’ll all have to wear tinfoil hats while driving.

  6. The state killed the Elio, not the market. If only Paul Elio had gone electric in the first place….. But the poor guy is an engineer, not a politician. There aren’t many of us still alive, but I remember when GMI was all male, all engineer. Most were real car guys. I wonder what Mary Barra drove in her school years.

    • “I wonder what Mary Barra drove in her school years.”

      Strange . . . I wonder how much Mary got ridden during her school years.

      The only college with a worse male to female ratio than GMI (Kettering University) used to be Michigan Tech University way, way up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Basically 10
      Hours north of Flint & GMI. Back in the day, the ratio was around 10:1. I believe the ratio is closer to 3:1 now.

      At both engineering schools, even the ugliest of women had no issues finding a man desperate enough to treat them like the last women on a deserted island. Both schools were notorious for having women with egos larger than they were worthy of anywhere else.

      I sure Mary did very well for herself at GMI.

      Shallow I know . . . But true based on my lived experience with both schools and the parties that I attended. Ah, the nuances of the dating scene at a couple of Michigan’s engineering schools.

      • Burn It Down: “At both engineering schools, even the ugliest of women had no issues finding a man desperate enough to treat them like the last women on a deserted island.”

        In my day the more desireable dates were generally from Hurley School of Nursing, just up the street. I don’t even remember any rumors of guy-on-guy stuff. There were plenty of awfully nice girls around Flint in those days. I dated a car-hop. Great kid. Probably still are if you care to look for them.

        (And every frat house had Billie’s number posted by the phone. You know who you are!)

  7. Here I was thinking this article was going to just be about them being oversized to the point where you cant wear a full brim hat in the car.

    This….absolutely not. We may see the day when there are tin foil car headrests.

  8. Eric, your article made me think of something.
    I’m a big Sci-Fi buff, mostly space travel kind of things.
    In a lot of them, humans are escaping Earth because of things gone bad. One of the repeating themes is called things like ‘the bio-digital plague’. These are the melding of digital things into our brains, and obviously in the stories, go bad, very bad.

  9. There’s a meme floating around that’s a picture of the edge of quarters. There’s an arrow pointing at the copper and the caption “If you understand this you are deep into the rabbit hole.”

    Image being on top of the food chain, being able to remove the value of coinage. Imagine that the public reaction was very negative (try finding a silver dime these days, bad money drove out good), but almost no one complained? Where were the riots? Sure, there were protests about war and “inequality,” which could be argued are symptomatic of currency devaluation, but where were my parents and grandparents?

    Simple, they were watching TV. TV didn’t mention it, the newspapers, if they mentioned it at all, probably buried it on page 6 of the financial section, and radio was just playing Perry Como. No one noticed because no one knew. And the masses were still living with the central command and control of FDR’s socialism and the aftermath of WW2. PTSD on a national scale.

    Compare this to a century earlier. The 1896 election was mostly about currency. McKinley ran on sound money while Bryan wanted to devalue the money. McKinley won. There were cheap competitive newspapers, the various fraternal clubs and of course churches all providing information to voters. People who could smell BS a mile away.

    Now that the mainstream has been outted as an obvious puppet of the regime, anything they say is up for secondary evaluation. The alternative viewpoint is a click away, requires no effort. And people are realizing they’ve been fed a line that doesn’t pass the sniff test. I think in the long term we’ll look back at the 20th century and realize it was the dark ages in many ways.

    They need brain wave scanners because they’ve lost the ability to control the narrative.

    • “The alternative viewpoint is a click away, requires no effort.”

      I have to note that although this is true, the vast majority cannot be bothered.

      COVID proved this. However, I’ve been seeing this for years, long before COVID that most people either can’t be bothered or only know how to use the internet to circulate cat videos.

      I see this on auto forums all the time where someone posts a question that is easily answered with a quick search of Google or the forum itself. Yet, they expect someone else to answer their inane question that has already been answered 100 times before they posted.

      People are beyond lazy. Thanks to the TeeeVeee, and schools, they expect to be spoon fed information by others.

  10. The “feature” isn’t nearly as important as the Patents to weaponize against competitors.

    Lots of Patents were involved with the backup cameras.

  11. “contactless, non-invasive way of collecting brainwave activity data and helping (car companies) interpret it in a way that can ensure drivers stay alert and are otherwise in tip-top driving form.”

    You gotta be shittin’ me. When is this nonsense gonna stop? It stops when Americans reach down and grab a pair and say “eff you”.

    • [You gotta be shittin’ me. When is this nonsense gonna stop? It stops when Americans reach down and grab a pair and say “eff you”.]

      Ain’t gonna’ happen.

      I’m so tired of hearing the phrase “I was forced to take the jab”

      BS. You were forced to stand up for yourself, your bodily autonomy, and your own health & safety. You failed!

      If people couldn’t be bothered to stand up to resist the jab, they certainly can’t be bothered to resist the encroachment of regulation into the cars they buy.

  12. You can’t MRI drivers, most of them are brainless.

    Remember those single-stemmed head rests?

    A local farmer was driving down the highway one night, got hit from behind, the stem of the head rest pithed his brain instantly.

    Got MRI’ed the old-fashioned way.

    That is why there are two post head rests.

    CIA, MRI, what difference does it make?

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