HUDWAY Drive: The Visual Assistant For Drivers With Hearing Loss
Submitted by: HUDWAY
2020-07-16 00:01:14
HUDWAY introduces the portable heads-up display & GPS navigation which helps people with hearing loss keep their eyes on the road and make driving significantly less distracted and stressful while behind the wheel with checking directions and speed control.
(OPENPRESS) While vision is undeniably a driver's most important sense, hearing plays a large part in how you interact with the world, even inside your car. Nearly half of the population over the age of 65 has some form of hearing loss, and a fair share of them still drive themselves and their loved ones to and from errands and work. Hearing loss should not stop them from driving a car, but they need to take extra measures to protect themselves and the other people in the vehicle.
HUDWAY introduces a portable aftermarket Head-Up Display (HUD), called HUDWAY Drive, specially designed for drivers with hearing loss to stay connected with Maps, Calls, Texts & Notifications projected through your windshield with both hands on the wheel, and eyes on the road.
As numerous studies and interviews with drivers with hearing loss have shown, these are the reasons why hearing loss makes everyday commute and long journeys behind the wheel more difficult:
- Vision is the only sense you can rely on behind the wheel;
- Therefore the voice assistant of your favorite nav app is useless. While looking at the road you don't get warnings, turn-by-turn directions, speed limits — so you have to visually check navigation apps and dashboard a way often. For the same reason, you might miss a turn or get a speed ticket;
- As you can't hear horns and emergencies on the road — you might not react properly;
- Also, as every third driver normally does (which we know is illegal and bad, but we all busy people) — drivers with hearing loss are also using smartphones and get distracted with texts, notifications and video-calls. And that makes driving even more dangerous.
HUDWAY Drive addresses these problems with a HUD on the driver's line of sight — so you see all the information projected through your windshield, with a virtual image floating above the hood. It can be easily removed and put into a glove compartment when you do not need it. It connects to your smartphone wirelessly via BT to get directions, incoming calls and text.
Here is how you drive with HUDWAY Drive:
- Always see your current speed and limit in front of your eyes. If you are speeding, you'll see warning signals — right there on the road where you are normally looking while driving;
- If you are going to an unfamiliar place, you search and start routing in the app — and you always have turn-by-turn directions right in front of your eyes: distance to the maneuver, lines, and where you need to turn. A visual assistant will draw your extra attention before the maneuver;
- When you receive a message or other notification from your fav apps — see whether a notification is worth pulling over to read and reply. View message preview and other notifications without having to focus your attention on a phone;
- Whenever a call comes in — see who's calling without having to reach for your smartphone. See if you actually want to pick up :)
- If you like to control every bit of your vehicle, such as RPM, oil or engine temperature — with any OBD-II dongle HUDWAY Drive app is able to read it and show it to you in HUD mode.
"… and the virtual image is floating above the hood at a distance of 8ft. from the driver's eyes, so you don't have to frequently refocus your sight. Vision is the only thing that drivers with hearing loss can rely on and we would like to reduce this load through convenient and useful technologies in the vehicle." — said Ivan Klabukov, CEO and Co-founder of HUDWAY.
Driving is all about being aware of what's going on around you, and traffic horns and emergencies might be an issue. That's why we are also working on adding the extra feature — surrounding sound recognition, to draw the driver's attention if something noisy is going on nearby.
The mass production is just launched, and the devices will be available on the US market in September 2020. Additional information and availability might be found on our website.
HUDWAY company:
HUDWAY is a California based company that makes hardware and software solutions to enhance driving safety and comfort while staying connected behind the wheel. At the moment, the company has already launched 7 products for b2c and b2b markets. HUDWAY has been ranked in the TOP-10 of The Most Innovative Companies in the Automotive Sector.
Contact Info
HUDWAY
Phone: Not Given
Website: http://Hudway.co
21020 Pacific City Cir 2103, Huntington Beach, CA-92648, USA
