Facial Recognition Might Be Coming To Your Car

cartechboy writes What if you got into your car and you had to authenticate that it was you behind the wheel? That might be what's coming in the near future as Ford's working with Intel to bring facial recognition to the car. The idea would be to improve safety and in-car tech with this system which is being called Project Mobil. When someone enters a Project Mobil-equipped car the system uses front-facing cameras to authenticate the driver. If the driver can't be authenticated it'll send a photo to the vehicle owner's phone asking for permission for this person to drive the vehicle. Once identified, the car can then automatically adjust certain settings to the driver's preference. This could also theoretically allow parents to control how loud their kids listen to the music while driving, how fast they can drive, and even simply monitor them driving. Obviously this NSA-like surveillance tech is a bit creepy on some levels, but there could be a lot of terrific applications for it. While only an experiment, don't be surprised if your dashboard stares back at you eventually.

Law enforcement ....

[PPH]

... needs evidence of who was driving a car when it is caught in an infraction by automated systems. In some jurisdictions, not having clear evidence of the identity of a driver is sufficient to have the case thrown out. This is how they will get their evidence.

If the car won't start without positive facial recognition, that rules out the duct tape over the lens fix.