According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1,161 people are injured and more than eight are killed in the US each day as a result of distracted driving.

While tasks such as eating or using in-vehicle technologies are common concerns, one of my pet peeves - texting and driving - is especially dangerous as it combines all three types of distractions : visual (taking your eyes off the road), manual (taking your hands off the wheel) and cognitive (taking your mind off of driving).

Nearly every state in the country has made texting and driving a punishable offense yet the issue persists largely because there simply aren't enough police on the streets to enforce the law.

That's where artificial intelligence and computer vision step in.

Movidius, the artificial intelligence and computer vision chipmaker that Intel acquired last month, has partnered with Chinese security camera maker Hikvision. Together, they've developed "smart" cameras that, among other useful tasks, could be used by law enforcement to catch those texting and driving in the act and send them a ticket via snail mail.

Is that going to stop people from texting and driving? Of course not, but with any luck, maybe it could reduce the statistics a tiny bit and cause habitual offenders to think twice about responding to a message right away.

Conversely, as Quartz highlights, intelligent security cameras like this could just as easily be abused by law enforcement and the government by putting them to work as surveillance devices. No matter the case, it always seems to come down to a trade-off between privacy and protection.

Image courtesy Damian Dovarganes, AP