New Car Safety Features that can Save Your Life

The rise of the digital age has made our lives a lot easier. Today, we can complete work tasks on the go, or order a pizza on the way home from soccer practice to find a delivery person bringing it fresh to our door. While technology has its conveniences, it also has the potential to save lives. Applying innovative technology to the auto industry can create life-saving features that will decrease the number of car accident related injuries and fatalities. Here’s what you need to know about the latest car safety features that might just save your life:

The cruise control of yesteryear simply kept you at a consistent speed without having to press the gas pedal – convenient for long trips on empty roads, but not feasible for your average commute. Enter adaptive cruise control, which does more than just keep you at a certain speed – it uses sophisticated radar technology to detect traffic patterns and adjust your car’s speed accordingly.

You can still set the speed like normal cruise control, but your adaptive cruise control always leaves enough space for cars in front of you. With the addition of collision warning and automatic braking, it’s one of the best safety features you can have on your vehicle.

  • Automatic Parking

No one likes parking in a bustling urban area, especially if that parking is of the parallel variety. Trying to navigate tight parking spots in traffic is enough to fray anyone’s nerves. With automatic parking, getting in and out of your spots is a breeze. If you have automatic parking, all you have to do is pull up to the spot, and the car will use cameras and radar technology to park itself. Keep in mind that you might have to control the brake pedal and switch the car into reverse, but the car does all the maneuvering on its own. It’s a great way to avoid property damage and fender bender claims.

  • Lane Monitoring and Departure Warnings

Everyone falls into the hum-drum of the morning or afternoon commute. When you travel the same roads day after day, it’s easier to become distracted. Lane monitoring technology uses the road markings to assess if you’re drifting out of your lane without a turn signal and will alert you with a vibration, sound, or flash of light. Some car models even have intervention and corrective steering. These are great options for highways, but may also work well on suburban or rural routes.

  • Automatic Emergency Braking

Rear end accidents are one of the most common types of car crashes. Thankfully, emergency braking can use technology to detect an impending crash and stop your vehicle before it happens. Some cars can handle emergency braking at highway speeds, but some only function at lower ones. This feature has become so popular that many automakers committed to standardizing the technology in their vehicles by 2022.

  • Backup Cameras

Backup cameras have been one of the most useful of the life-saving car technologies. Each week in the United States, 50 children under the age of 15 sustain injuries or die from back-over collisions. Backup cameras offer a safe solution to help prevent these horrible accidents. In fact, the technology has the potential to save so many lives that it’s standard on all makes and models effective May 2018.

Backup cameras provide live footage of what’s going on behind your car. This helps in neighborhoods, as well as backing out of busy shopping malls.

Today’s car safety features are doing more than just providing convenience to drivers – they’re saving lives. As cars become more autonomous, we can expect more life-saving technologies to become standard on new vehicles.