A car that nurses your heart

The risks associated with an ageing population of motorists is prompting Toyota to develop cars that can nurse their drivers.

The car maker fears 'unexpected cardiac events' will increasingly put drivers, passengers and other road users at risk and believes technology can help.

Michigan Medicine researcher Kayvan Najarian, Ph.D. says the project’s goal is to “To come up with a system that would predict the occurrence of adverse cardiac events in real time.”

Najarian describes on the Michigan University website some of the challenges that his team expect to face: “You can’t have clinical-grade monitoring devices in the vehicle. You need to use a high-quality monitoring device in the vehicle that, despite all the in-vehicle noise, could reliably register the driver’s ECG without being large and obtrusive. It’s going to have to be different than what you would expect to experience in a clinical or hospital setting.”

The research team plan to test algorithmic and hardware options that can be housed inside the vehicle to monitor the driver’s heart. Results are expected in 2020.

Want a healthy heart? Drive less

There is an unfortunate irony that a proportion of drivers who will benefit from this technology will only be in need of it because they spent to great a proportion of their lives behind the wheel.

Researchers have discovered that commuting by car has a damaging effect on a driver's mental health. Cycling, walking, and even travelling by public transport, by contrast, have a positive effect on well-being.

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A study by Norwich medical school of over 17,000 commuters and 18 years of data found that car commuters were at least 13 per cent more likely to feel constantly under strain or unable to concentrate” than those who cycled or walked to work. The longer drivers spent on their daily commute, the worse their psychological well-being.

The findings appear to reinforce previous research suggesting that workers who cycle to work have fewer sick days.

When commuting by car was compared to public transport, a way of travelling to work that is often described as beset by overcrowding and delays, the researchers found that those using buses and trains benefited from better levels of wellbeing.

Lead researcher Adam Martin, from University of East Anglia's Norwich Medical School, said: “One surprising finding was that commuters reported feeling better when travelling by public transport, compared to driving. You might think that things like disruption to services or crowds of commuters might have been a cause of considerable stress. But as buses or trains also give people time to relax, read, socialise, and there is usually an associated walk to the bus stop or railway station, it appears to cheer people up.”

The researchers believe that stress caused by delays and cancellations are offset by the face that bus and rail commuters also get time to relax, road or socialise, and even the walk – or run – to the station, and this is thought to cheer them up.

Modal mood shift

The research appears to suggest that if more of us commuted to work by bicycle, the mood of the nation would be lifted. However, there is a long way to go. Data from the 2011 Census (England and Wales) shows that 67.1 per cent of commuters use cars or vans as their usual main commute mode compared to 17.8 per cent who use public transport, 10.9 per cent who walk and just 3.1 per cent who cycle.

Cycle insurance for commuters

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