On Monday, May 1st, Nissan Motors announced their plans to embed their Signal Shield into certain car models. The Signal Shield is an armrest based on a 19th century technology commonly referred to as a Faraday cage. This cage is intended to block electric fields from reaching your mobile device thus making it impossible to connect to cellular signals, data, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
Built into the armrests of Nissan’s acclaimed Juke crossovers, the Signal Shield is intended to help drivers keep their hands off their smartphones while driving. Once the lid closes on the armrest housing your mobile device, it won’t allow any text message, calls or email alert notifications from entering the phone.
Once a driver removes their phone from the armrest, their device will go back to normal working conditions and will notify of any pending messages received while it was stored away.
The Faraday Cage technology works as an enclosure made of conductive material, such as wire mesh, which is built-in to help block electromagnetic fields. The name comes from the pioneering English scientist, Michael Faraday, who originally invented the technology in the 1830s.
Faraday bags are often used by people preventing hackers from getting access to their mobile devices or by law enforcement officials handling criminal investigations that need to block remote wiping or alterations from being made on an electronic device.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a total of eight people are killed and over 1,000 are injured each day in the U.S. due to distracted driving. The leading causes of distracted driving also happen to be mobile devices.
In a recent interview with CNNTech, Nissan explained that their implementation of the Signal Shield is better than making drivers shut off their phones entirely because of its ability to still let drivers listen to music or podcasts stored on their devices. The built-in Faraday cage allows phones to plug into a USB or auxiliary connection while it is stored in the armrest.
Drivers can also make urgent phone calls via the Bluetooth by simply opening up the armest, Dominic Vizor, a spokesman for Nissan, said.
A recent report released by Nissan stated that almost one in five drivers admit to have illegally texted while driving more than once in their lifetime. The report also states the percentage of drivers admitting to distracted driving has grown from eight percent in 2014 to a whopping 31 percent in 2016.
“The Nissan Signal Shield concept presents one possible solution for giving drivers the choice to remove all smartphone distractions while driving. This is about delivering more control at the wheel, not less,” Nissan Motors Managing Director, Alex Smith said. “Some drivers are immune to the activity of their smartphone, but for those who struggle to ignore the beeps and pings, this concept provides a simple solution in this very ‘connected’ world we live in.”
Even though the Signal Shield is still a prototype, Nissan drivers already have access to this feature and get the armrest installed into their vehicles.