Hyundai files patent for smartphone feature disabler in proximity to steering wheel

Combatting driver distraction continues to be a hot topic in automotive safety, especially when it comes to young motorists. While simply not using a smartphone behind the wheel would fix much of the problem, automakers are trying to work out complicated ways to make people safer. For example, GM is experimenting with head and eye tracking to make sure folks are paying attention to the road. Now,Hyundai might have come up with a technology that offers a very simple fix: disable the phones.

The Korean automaker explains the idea in explicit detail in a recently published patent. The tech specifically "limits or disables the use of some of mobile device features which could cause distraction to the user," according to the abstract. Depending on variables like the vehicle's speed, the system determines what smartphone functions are safe to use, including texting or voice calls. Based on a plethora of permutations in the document, these restrictions could only be for the area around the driver's seat or for the whole vehicle.

The key to the patent is placing antennas around the vehicle and monitoring for cellular signals. When the system detects them, it can begin selectively deciding what features to allow on the device. The tech isn't a simple on/off switch either, and can possibly detect the time of day or importance of the caller to let messages though. The major downside to all of this is the phone would need to run a specific program or firmware for all of this to work.

With such a recently published patent, it might be years before the tech arrives in Hyundai vehicles, if at all. Still, this is an interesting solution. Of course, it would be far simpler if people just put down their phones.

Hyundai helps daughter send message to astronaut dad in a big way

Hyundai hopes you’ll think its Genesis luxury sedan is out of this world, and it’s pulled off a unique stunt to drive that message home, by sending a message to space the old fashioned way -- like Nazca lines old fashioned.

The automaker had the daughter of one of the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) handwrite a message to her father, and then used a fleet of cars to almost perfectly replicate it with tire marks on Delamar Dry Lake in Nevada at a large enough scale that it could be spotted from 249 miles straight up.

The note reads "Steph ❤s you!” and was apparently directed at ISS Commander Terry Virts, although he is not identified in the video documenting the event.

To pull it off, Hyundai needed 11 cars wearing studded tires driving side by side to make the lines wide and deep enough to be picked up clearly by the telephoto lens on the astronaut’s DSLR camera. The entire message covers over two square miles, enough to earn it a Guinness World Record for “largest tire track image.”

The producer of the project, Johnny Lee of Duo Films, says it was shot over three days in January following several weeks of logistics work. His team worked with civil engineers to lay out the design, then mapped it into a GPS system to guide the drivers.

If you still don’t believe it is real, Bureau of Land Management spokesman Chris Hanafeld says that while Mother Nature is quickly erasing it, remnants of the message remain, so feel free to make the 2.5-hour drive north from Las Vegas to check it out for yourself.

Coincidentally, Delamar Dry Lake was the site of a 2012 drop test for the Boeing CST-100 crew transportation capsule, which is on track to star ferrying future astronauts to the ISS by 2017.