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After decades of fruitless efforts to improve safety on the country’s roads, inventive Russians may at last have found a way to deal with the drastic situation. Russian scientists have come up with the idea of a gadget that will help drivers stay awake behind the wheel. Unlike Russia’s lawmakers, this magic ring could really increase road safety.

“When a person starts to doze off, all the metabolic processes slow down sharply,” Professor Vladimir Sukhodoev, from the Psychology Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RT. “The neurological characteristics which used to be quite active then slump, too. This is all picked up by the ring, and the ups and downs are measured here.”

The ring sounds an alarm within a minute of recording a dip in metabolism. If there is no reaction after five seconds, the device vibrates until the driver responds.

The ring is the brainchild of entrepreneur Aleksandr Levenshtein, who will launch sales in December. He hopes to sell 100,000 such gadgets in the first year, and then the same amount per month after that. He says it will succeed because it is based on new research.

“The only product meant to combat sleep at the moment is activated by head movements: if the head drops, then it means the person has fallen asleep already,” Levenshtein said. “But people can drift off with their eyes open and head stable, which is dangerous. Our device detects that. We prevent sleep, without waiting for it.”

Aleksandr hopes the ring will reduce the alarming fatality rate on Russia’s highways – last year, the figure amounted to 30,000.

However, those who spend their life on the road are not convinced.

“It would be inappropriate to put your life in the hands of an electronic device,” long-distance driver Sergey Elchaninov told RT. “A sudden sound normally wakes you up, but you can’t fully trust such equipment to save your life.”

While getting behind the wheel when tired is never a good idea, Sergey suggests chewing gum or drinking water.

Source: RT