Your Toyota Might Soon Be Taking Your Pictures For You

We tend to think of automotive technology as just one more thing competing for our attention behind the wheel. Fair enough, most of the time. But every so often, an automaker comes up with something aimed squarely at the opposite goal: safer driving. That might be the case with a patent application Toyota just filed, one that would let drivers snap a photo without ever taking their hands off the wheel.

• The system pairs an interior camera with the vehicle’s exterior cameras

• The driver’s gaze automatically determines what gets photographed

• Images are sent straight to a mobile device, never stored in the car itself

Yes, you read that right.

How It Works

The concept, outlined in a patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, starts with a camera trained on the driver’s face that can track exactly where their eyes are pointed. Paired with one or more exterior cameras already built into the vehicle’s driver-assist suite, the system would figure out precisely what the driver is looking at outside the car, whether that’s a classic car, a specific building, or pretty much anything that catches the eye of the person behind the wheel.

To take the picture, the driver would need to give a voice command or press a button on the steering wheel, and the vehicle would capture the image and send it to a paired phone.

No need to glance away from the road, and no fumbling with a device.

It sounds like something out of science fiction. Impressive? Sure. Useful? That depends on what you’re into. Snapping a shot of a sharp old car is one thing, but what about photos that might capture people who’d rather not be photographed? Then again, people already do this constantly with their phones on the street, and cameras are everywhere these days anyway.

We’re living in a strange time, that’s for sure.

Still, Toyota’s underlying intention here is a good one.

Fighting a Distraction

Let’s be honest: plenty of drivers already grab their phone to snap something that caught their eye mid-drive, putting themselves and everyone else on the road at risk. Toyota‘s pitch starts from that exact reality.

Before anyone gets too excited about trying this out, it’s worth remembering this is still just an idea tied up in a patent filing. There’s no guarantee it ever makes it onto a production model.

That said, if the payoff genuinely holds up, keeping drivers’ hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road, it’s hard to argue against this kind of innovation. Distracted driving remains one of the leading causes of crashes. Crashes that are 100 percent preventable.

Whether Toyota actually moves forward with this one remains to be seen.