Smarter Cars, Safer Roads: How Artificial Intelligence Can Curb Reckless Driving and Protect Our Young People
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As a former prosecutor and examining magistrate, I have read too many accident files that began with a young driver, a phone, excessive speed and a night road. According to the World Health Organization's July 2026 release, road crashes killed 1.16 million people worldwide in 2025, and road traffic injuries remain the leading cause of death among children and young people aged 5 to 29. In an earlier article I proposed rebuilding Lebanon's vehicle registry with artificial intelligence. Here I turn to prevention: how AI can stop reckless behaviour before it becomes a death certificate.
1. The intelligent vehicle as a first line of defence
Modern cars increasingly carry a silent co-pilot. Driver-monitoring cameras detect drowsiness and distraction and issue escalating warnings. Intelligent speed assistance reads traffic signs and map data and alerts the driver, or resists acceleration, when the limit is exceeded. Automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping systems intervene in the split second where human reaction fails. Alcohol-detection technologies and interlocks can prevent an impaired driver from starting the engine at all.
The European Union has turned these tools into law. Under the General Safety Regulation (EU) 2019/2144, intelligent speed assistance, driver drowsiness and attention warning, automatic emergency braking and emergency lane keeping have been mandatory in all new cars registered in the EU since 7 July 2024. Notably, drowsiness and distraction systems must process data in a closed loop, without retaining or sharing it: privacy by design.
2. AI on the roadside and in enforcement
Outside the vehicle, computer-vision cameras can detect speeding, red-light violations, missing seatbelts and handheld phone use. Predictive models combining crash history, traffic flow and weather can map hotspots, allowing police to deploy patrols and engineers to redesign dangerous junctions. AI can also shorten the "golden hour": automatic crash detection, whether from vehicle emergency-call systems or smartphones, can alert ambulances with precise coordinates, while adaptive traffic signals clear their route.
3. A focus on young drivers
Young drivers combine inexperience with a higher appetite for risk. Telematics offers a targeted answer. Graduated-licence applications can record speed, harsh braking, night driving and phone handling during the probationary period, giving feedback to the driver and, with consent, to parents or insurers. Rewards such as lower premiums make safe driving attractive rather than merely compulsory. Coupled with Traffic Law No. 243 of 2012 and its points-based licence, such data could support coaching and early intervention instead of purely punitive responses.
4. Legal safeguards: efficiency without arbitrariness
These tools process personal data, and some produce sanctions. The law must keep pace. First, processing must rest on Law No. 81 of 2018 on Electronic Transactions and Personal Data, with purpose limitation, short retention and masking of bystanders. Second, surveillance must be proportionate: cameras justified by documented risk, not blanket monitoring. Third, due process: no automated fine should be issued without review by a qualified officer, certified and calibrated equipment, access to the evidence, and an effective right of appeal before an independent authority and, ultimately, a judge. Fourth, algorithms used by the state should be auditable and tested for error and bias.
5. Practical recommendations for Lebanon and the region
- Align vehicle-import standards progressively with the EU General Safety Regulation, starting with speed assistance and emergency braking.
- Pilot AI speed, red-light and phone-use enforcement on the most lethal corridors, with published results.
- Launch a voluntary telematics programme for new drivers, linked to insurance incentives.
- Integrate automatic crash alerts with the Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence dispatch.
- Adopt implementing decrees on automated evidence, data retention and human review.
- Publish annual, open road-safety data.
Conclusion
Technology will not replace education or the courts. But AI can make safe behaviour the default, detect danger in time and enforce the law fairly. For a country that loses too many young lives on its roads, adopting these tools within a sound legal framework is not a luxury; it is a duty.