When General Motors starts selling a new Cadillac sedan next year, it plans to equip the car with G.M.’s answer to Tesla Motors’ Autopilot. Like Autopilot, G.M.’s SuperCruise feature will be designed to steer a car for long stretches of highway driving, pass other vehicles, brake for traffic, speed up and change lanes — all with minimal effort by the driver. There is one thing the G.M. system will force drivers to do, though, that Tesla’s system does not: keep their eyes on the road.
Unlike Tesla, G.M. has chosen to place a camera, near the rearview mirror, that monitors the driver’s actions.
“Through the driver’s eyes, you can detect his or her level of attention,” Mark Reuss, G.M.’s executive vice president for global product development, said in July at an auto technology conference in Detroit.