Driver inattention remains one of the toughest challenges in road safety. Ahead of InCabin Europe 2025, we spoke with Ilan Reingold (Corractions), Brian Brackenbury (Gentex), and Mike Lenne (Seeing Machines) about the enablers of in-cabin sensing, the persistent challenges of road safety, and how vehicles can evolve to become more human-aware. Read the full blog below.
What are the main enablers for future growth in in-cabin sensing?
When discussing the main enablers for future growth in in-cabin sensing, Ilan identified advances in AI, edge computing, and sensor fusion, which will enable more accurate and real-time detection of driver states.
Mike discussed advances in sensor technology, such as higher-resolution imaging and improved in-cabin perception capabilities, which will allow for greater accuracy and versatility in monitoring both driver and passenger states. This will drive both stronger safety outcomes and greater occupant acceptance. While safety is a primary driver here, these advances will also continue to unlock more and more convenience features for vehicle occupants, delivering additional value for the OEMs.
Additionally, both Mike and Ilan noted that increasing regulatory focus on safety and occupant protection, and impairment prevention, particularly with the rise of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, will motivate further adoption of advanced sensing solutions.
Mike highlighted that consumer demand for enhanced comfort, wellness features, and personalised infotainment is also accelerating innovation in this space.
Brian commented that as the individual technologies improve and feature expectations grow from customer and regulatory bodies alike, the ability to fuse and integrate multiply technologies into realisable, high-performance systems will be key. System integration and deep technical expertise of those systems are what Gentex see as key enablers to future growth in this space.
Finally, Mike noted that robust data privacy frameworks and seamless connectivity will be crucial, ensuring that in-cabin sensing technologies can deliver value while safeguarding user trust and security.
What are the biggest and most persistent challenges for road safety?
Brian’s short answer was “Human beings!”. Developing perception systems for the world in and around the modern automobile is highly complex and the variety and unpredictability of human beings will remain one of the single biggest challenges to our industry. The emotional expectations are that safety systems be 100% accurate and 100% reliable, but in reality, that is not possible, so how do you focus on the technologies, redundancies and safeguards that get you as close to 100% as possible.
In Ilan’s view, human factors, such as fatigue, distraction, and alcohol or substance intoxication, remain the hardest to address because they are less visible and harder to measure than “eyes on the road” alone.
Mike commented that road safety remains a complex and evolving challenge, shaped by a confluence of human, technological, and infrastructural factors. From a behavioural viewpoint, there are five factors globally that contribute the most to road trauma and are reflected in road safety strategies: distracted driving, impaired driving, drowsy driving, improper seat-belt use and speed. While there are many existing technologies to address speeding, in-cabin sensing is the best way to mitigate risks from the remaining four safety issues. Continuing to conquer these four, expanding distraction into cognitive distraction, impairment into broader drug classes, will make a huge impact on reducing death and injury on our roads.
How can the industry address “eyes-on–mind-off” crashes?
This is a great question and a hard issue to solve – and is actually the topic of Mike’s presentation at InCabin Barcelona. This crash type is due to driver inattention, which has several contributors that include cognitive distraction. The increasing fidelity of in-cabin perception, and integration with external sensing, is the path forward here.
Ilan believes that the industry must go beyond camera-based gaze tracking to include cognitive and impairment monitoring. By detecting attention lapses, fatigue, and intoxication at the neurological level, vehicles can intervene more effectively.
As mentioned by Brian, system integration & sensor fusion, stitched together with high-compute platforms & deep learning algorithms will allow for amazing capabilities in cognitive assessments. The industry is on the edge of being able to reliably predict if a driver has cognitive impairment, i.e. is not capable of effectively competing the driving task. The industry is quickly learning we may not need to fully identify why the driver has cognitive impairment, i.e. doziness, distraction, road rage, being “zoned out”, being drunk or otherwise impaired … the real goal is help understand when the driver is not behaving safely and enabling the car to take over or limit access as needed!
How can vehicles become more human-aware?
“We are in the midst of this revolution already!” commented Brian. Driver Monitoring Systems are going into production as we speak, full in-cabin & occupant monitoring systems are in development now, the AI revolution is fully underway, big Tech is jumping into the Auto industry with tradition players … this all adds up to an auto industry heavily committed to understanding human behaviour and making that the canter of the driving & riding experience!
Ilan’s viewpoint was that by integrating technologies that are non-intrusive, privacy-preserving, and adaptive, vehicles can better understand drivers’ cognitive load and impairment risks, providing timely assistance and interventions, and creating a more human-centred mobility experience.
Mike has spent his whole career in human factors, so while he admitted that he is somewhat biassed, he believes that this approach is key. “We are seeing ‘human factors’ and ‘human centred’ systems pop up all over the place, but are they really human-centred? What is key here is putting an understanding of humans at the centre of design and having that drive design strategies, rather than designing and looking to impose technology upon people. Enhancing vehicles to be more human-aware and human-centred calls for embedding empathy and adaptability into automotive design. This means developing intelligent interfaces that respond to human behaviour, using data analytics to anticipate risky behaviour, and fostering a seamless interaction between driver and vehicle.”
Ilan also made a final point that collaboration between automakers, regulators, and technology providers will be essential to establish standards that ensure trust, transparency, and rapid deployment of these life-saving systems.
Interested in exterior sensing technology?
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