GAZE-BASED VEHICLE-TO-VEHICLE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

A vehicle includes an eye tracker for tracking a gaze of an occupant of the vehicle. The vehicle has a processor to use gaze direction data to determine if the occupant is gazing at a nearby vehicle sensed by a vehicle-detecting sensor, e.g. a camera, LIDAR or RADAR. The processor determines an identification of the nearby vehicle by optically recognizing characters of a license plate of the nearby vehicle using the camera, or by detecting an identification beacon broadcast by the nearby vehicle using a short-range vehicle-to-vehicle transceiver. The vehicle includes a radiofrequency cellular transceiver to transmit a message to a server to look up the identification of the vehicle and to receive a communication-availability reply message indicating either a communication availability or communication unavailability of the nearby vehicle. The radiofrequency cellular transceiver or the short-range vehicle-to-vehicle transceiver initiates a voice communication with the nearby vehicle.