One of the biggest expenses in your life outside of your home will most likely be your car. After all, a lot of hard work and dedication goes into learning to drive and passing your driving test, and so when you get your car, it will often be something precious to you. Not to mention that the expense of buying a vehicle can be extremely high! Therefore, not only do you want your car to keep you and your passengers safe, but you also want it to stay away from trouble as much as possible. Technology is now making cars even safer than before, so here are a few examples of how your ‘smart’ car can help you avoid danger.
Backup Cameras and Reversing Sensors
In the past, you had to rely solely on your rear-view mirror and your side mirrors to help you see people and objects behind the car. It often made reversing a slow and nervous process in case you inadvertently hit something. Thankfully, there are now many accessories you can have in your car that can help you with reversing and more. Initially, cars started to be equipped with reversing sensors that were fitted inside the rear bumper. They work like sonar, sending out a signal and waiting for it to be bounced back. The quicker the sound returns, the nearer you are to an object. It made the now familiar beeping sound get faster, telling you to slow down or stop. After this invention, cars started to add cameras to the rear of their cars. The picture from behind the car was shown on the rear-view mirror, or on a screen on the console. Being able to see what’s behind you was popular with drivers who seemed to trust it more than the sensors. Move forward a few years, and you now have cameras all around the car to help you with reversing as well as parking. They can give you a full 360-degree picture for added safety and convenience.
Lane Detection Systems
While rear cameras and reversing sensors are designed to help you stay safe going backward, lane detection systems help you going forward. One of the big issues with motorway driving is getting tired at the wheel. It can lead to serious accidents that require emergency attention and leads to the introduction of injury lawyers. You can discover more about injury lawyers online. It led some car manufacturers to see if there was a way to prevent drivers from falling asleep at the wheel. One of the outcomes was lane detections systems which monitor the lines in the road as you drive along. If the car detects that you are wandering over the white lane lines, it will attempt to alert the driver by sounding a noise or vibrating the steering wheel. Of course, the best action by far is not to get into a tired state in the beginning, but at least with this technology, it should prevent many accidents at the wheel.
Auto Braking
Vehicles colliding with the one in front of them are common on the roads. The driver might be distracted, or perhaps they are driving too close behind the vehicle in front. Although these are common, and usually at low speeds, they can still cause damage and injury. A recent advance in-car technology has attempted to reduce these collisions through the use of automatic braking. The same sensors that are used in parking at the front of the car are also utilized when driving. They constantly monitor the area at the front of the car, and if something is about to collide with you, it applies the brakes.
Electronic Stability Control
You might think that something like electronic stability control would only be useful for those vehicles that go off-road. Although that is right, the system has many other ways of keeping a vehicle stable. For example, if you are driving in wet or icy conditions, the ESC can help to keep you going in the right direction. It can monitor the steering and tell when the car isn’t behaving in the right way. It can correct mid-turn and even brake individual wheels to prevent a skid. Some cars with this system can also adjust the cars vertical, so you are less likely to feel steep embankments.
Parking Assist
Along with reversing in general, many people hate parallel parking. One of the main reasons is because getting the angle right to get into a small space can be difficult and take many attempts to get correct. However, with the introduction of parking assist, many people now rely on their cars to do the hard work for them. Parking assist uses the cars exterior sensors to judge the distance of the cars around it. It then controls the steering, so it can effectively navigate into the parking space. All the driver needs to do is use the gas and brake pedals. When this technology was first introduced, many people felt a little uneasy letting their car park for them. They weren’t sure that it would work, so they often avoided using it. However, it has now become a necessity for many people, especially those in cities.
Voice Controls
Using a mobile phone while driving is incredibly dangerous, and many countries have strict laws about their use in cars. Thankfully, many modern cars now have Bluetooth technology built-in that allows you to interact with your phone without touching it. It means you can call contacts, answer calls and some even read your text messages to you. In-car voice controls are also used to control the navigation system and even control other functions of the car such as air conditioning.
Modern cars today are packed with technology that doesn’t just help the engine keep peak performance, but also keeps the car safe. It might be that a lot of this technology will lead the way to self-driving cars in the future but in the meantime, it is helping people avoid dangerous incidents and protecting people inside should an accident occur.
