Redefining Safety: Crash Avoidance!

Lets take a look at your car. What’s that baby got? I don’t mean horsepower and turbochargers, I mean safety!

Front air bags? Almost certainly.
Side airbags? Maybe.
Head curtains?
Side reinforcement?
Crash absorbers?

Five star crash safety rating?

Maybe you’ve got all of these goodies -- fantastic!

But let me ask you -- what would you rather do? Be well protected in a crash or never crash at all?

Today, over 100 people die every day on the roads, and crashes are rampant. But now, thankfully, we’re entering a new era – can you imagine a day when car crashes are almost unheard of? A time when you can take a trip without that thought lurking in the back of your mind that says “Its dangerous out there. Crashes happen all the time – somebody is not going to make it home today – will it be me?”

We are moving from crash protection to crash avoidance. Its about time, right? I mean, we have computers coming out our ears in every other aspect of our lives, so why not some smarts in our cars?

They’re actually very smart already, and when you add technology such as radars, laser scanning, machine vision, your vehicle starts to become “situation aware.” It can tell you if you’re about to inadvertently do something dangerous, like run a stop sign. It can tell you if you’re about to hit the guy in front of you while you fumble with changing CD’s. In fact, it can hit the brakes and stop you from hitting that guy. It can tell you if there’s someone in your blind spot when changing lanes. It can even tell you when you’re getting sleepy behind the wheel.

These systems are becoming increasingly available. For one thing, do NOT buy a new car without electronic stability control – it saves lives.

Besides that, there’s adaptive cruise control, night vision, blind spot monitors, lane departure warning, collision mitigation braking, parking assist, and more. That’s what’s out there now. What’s coming are “connected cars” which exchange data between each other and the road constantly to make sure all is well.

Imagine, for instance, knowing that that bridge ahead is icy before you get to it.

On Smartest Cars, we’re here to tell you about these vehicles, which will take us well beyond the airbag mentality. We’ll show you the brilliant engineers putting the newest systems through their paces, who have to figure out how to make radar blips mean something! We’ll talk to people using these systems today – do they work? Do they make sense, or is it all just techno-infatuation for the geeky few?

Imagine – cars that don’t crash.

That's what this blog is all about -- stay tuned!