Smart technology and your car

When you’re looking to buy a new car, you may want to consider the many smart technology options available these days. Besides connecting you to other people, music, and media, many smart additions to a car can help keep you safer and more secure while driving and can help protect your car when you’re not around.

• Adaptive cruise control keeps you at a safe distance from the car in front of you when you’re driving. It will automatically slow your car down or speed it up, depending on the speed of the car in front of you, always staying within a safe speed. These types of controls are often integrated with the car’s navigation systems and cameras. Some systems will slow the car down to take sharper turns, reduce your speed if posted speed limits change, or offer traffic jam assist by slowing and stopping in stop-and-go traffic.
  
  
• Lane departure warning and lane-keep assist will alert you when your car starts drifting into another lane. By using your car’s camera, this system keeps you from crossing into another lane by taking control of the steering wheel or gently braking.
  
  
• Blind-spot alert will sound an alarm, buzzer or tone if it detects a car in your blind spot when you are driving at a certain speed or turn on your blinker in anticipation of changing lanes. To ensure that you are aware of the alert, some systems vibrate your seat or flash a warning light on your mirror or dashboard.
  
  
• Cross-traffic alert will let you know if there is a vehicle, cyclist, or pedestrian approaching when you are backing your car out of a parking space or driveway. It will typically show an alert on the reversing camera display, showing the direction from which the object is coming.
  
  
• Reverse brake assist will sound an alert if it detects an object behind you when you are backing up, then will stop your car if you don’t brake quickly enough.

While the technologies above are available in many vehicles these days, the ones listed below are still in development. They may be available soon, so keep a lookout for their appearance in new models.

• Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication (V2V) is said to give cars the ability to wirelessly broadcast and receive information, creating a 360-degree “awareness” of the cars around you as you drive. It uses alerts to let drivers know when to take an action to avoid an accident. It can even detect dangers that you might not be able to see due to traffic, terrain, or weather.
  
  
• Heads Up Display (HUD) uses technology to show data such as the car’s speed, engine health, and navigation at the base of the windshield, so you can keep your eyes on the road when driving. Some even use GPS and sensors to display potential dangers or provide hologram-like driving directions.