Future Ford Drivers May Get Tech To Annoy Rear Passengers

Ford Motor Company has filed a patent for a rear passenger attention attraction system that may be used in future Ford vehicles, Ford Authority has learned.

The patent was filed on March 13^th, 2023, published on September 19^th, 2024, and assigned serial number 0308425.

The Ford Authority Take

In recent months, Ford has filed a number of patents that aim to monitor various things inside of vehicles, including ideas for a vehicle interior evaluation system, automatically adjusting seats based on occupancy, and a monitoring system for packages. Now, this newly published patent gives us something similar, yet also completely different – a rear passenger attention attraction system that may be used in future Ford vehicles, perhaps as a way to annoy the folks riding in the rear, albeit, for valid reasons.

The concept here isn’t the bother someone like a friend or parent riding in the rear of a vehicle, but rather, a child or teenager that may be on their phone or another mobile deice and not necessarily paying attention to anything else. Thus, Ford proposes using what it calls a “telltale” to get their attention if needed, which drivers could access via the infotainment screen. Once selected, it would activate a flashing red light in the rear seat designed to get the attention of the rear seat passengers, and once that happens, the user could simply press the screen to deactivate it.

This particular concept is quite simple and yet potentially useful – especially for parents – given the rise in the use of electronic devices these days. There are certainly more than a few parents out there that have a hard time getting their kids to put those devices down long enough to tell them something, which makes a great business case for any kind of idea that would help with that effort – especially if the parent needs to tell their kids something important.