Lets set the record straight here: using your phone for any purpose when driving is never good. No one should be doing that, ever. Not even when you are at the traffic light. However, for some reasons, some folks think some people don’t care anyways, so they have came up with hardware and software solution that will enable these folks not get honked at when they are fixated with their devices at the lights. The product in question is called Redlight Greenlight camera. It is essentially a wide FoV camera with high sensitivity sensor that recognizes stoplight and faces.
The hardware mounts to the dash at the windscreen, much like dash cam does, and it is linked to your phone via Bluetooth 5. When setup, the camera will alert you via your phone when the light turns green, so you’d know to move on. And thanks to the built-in facial recognition, it can even alert you of any crawling pedestrians who may be still crossing the road. Yes, really. The Redlight Greenlight is guaranteed to be a tech that gets frown upon by many, the authorities included. Not surprisingly, it is has been dubbed as the “one of the dumbest ideas of all time,” by road safety experts.
I am not expert, but if you ask me, I’d say it is brilliant and dumb tech at the same time. Brilliant for the real-time recognition it promises. Dumb because, like I have said, no one should even look at the phone when behind the wheel, moving or not, for obvious reasons. Anyways, we have no idea who is behind this possibly bad gadget, but we do know that it is in its concept phase and it is leveraging on Indiegogo to make it a reality. And oh, it is asking for at least $150 in return.
Not cheap at all, considering that there’s a chance you’d be paying with your driving license, or worst, your life or someone else. I don’t know, somehow this product feels more like a prank. I mean, whoever is behind it has an overly unrealistic, out-of-this-world lofty funding goal of a million bucks. Yup. One million dollars. Seriously? Nevertheless, skip ahead for the pitch video.
Images: Indiegogo.
A huge shout out to Taylor Lear for this hat tip!
