15 Awesome Gadgets That Could Save Your Life In A Crash

There are about 6 million car accidents yearly, with 40,000 being fatal. To put that into perspective, that’s enough people to fill Fenway Park to the bleachers. Although you can’t cheat death, these 15 gadgets improve your odds of walking away from a metal twisting collision.

1. Braking Bag

The Mercedes “braking bag” props up the car about 3 inches and brings deceleration to 20 m/s2 (read: blitzkrieg fast). The idea is to avoid the brutal damage from nose diving – when the frontend drops from slamming the brakes - and to simultaneously lower the speed before collision. The “braking bag” is still in prototype, but Mercedes hopes to roll it out within the next few years.

2. Collision warning with automatic braking.

This technology is like Spidey-sense… for your car. It uses radar to sense when the cars ahead have slowed down or stopped. An alarm lets you know to slow down. If the driver doesn’t brake at all or not enough to avoid impact then the car does it for him automatically.

3. Self Inflating Tires

Self Inflating Tires aren’t like the kind James Bond had, which re-inflate when punctured. Instead, these puppies make sure your wheels are always at the correct pressure level (PSI). This, in turn, avoids blowouts, excessive wear and other safety threats.

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4. Advanced frontal airbags

You are now looking at the future of airbag technology. The system tracks and gauges passenger size, seat positioning and the intensity of impact. Airbag deployment is then customized to the situation, keeping passengers safer and reducing the number of airbag related injuries.

5. Electronic stability control, or ESC.

In a nutshell, ESC keeps you from skidding off the road. It tracks you engine power, braking and trajectory to calculate if you’re in danger of losing control. If it finds a risk, the system corrects the deviance by regulating braking and engine output.

6. Automatic crash notification

If you are in a cataclysmic accident, you want this system in your car. It calls in the cavalry, so to speak, by alerting emergency assistance when your car is in a collision. Look into Onstar, Lexus Link, BMW Assist or TeleAid to get your hands on one of your own.

7. Side-impact and side curtain airbags

Smashing your head through the window during a side-impact collision isn’t the most pleasant sensation. You can avoid that kind of unpleasantness with “side-impact airbags”, which are exactly what they sound like. And, as an added perk, they also keep you from getting ejected from the vehicle in the event of a rollover (another very unpleasant experience).

8. Seatbelt

Here’s a fact: seatbelts lower front seat fatalities in major accidents by 50%. What’s more, 7,000 deaths a year could’ve been avoided had the driver buckled up. So, unless you’re too cool for life, it makes sense to strap in.

9. Lane departure warning

Warning rumble strips (those breakdown lane bumps for waking up dozing drivers) only help when the driver is in the external lane. That’s where this technology comes in; it sounds an alarm if the car begins swaying and can even take control of the vehicle to move it back into the proper lane.

10. Blind-zone warning

This sensor system is made for multi-lane travel. The unit uses warning lights and an alarm system to signal when cars are beside you and, potentially, in your blind spots.

11. Adaptive headlights

Adaptive headlights would be fitting for the Batmobile or KITT from Knight Rider; as you turn the wheel your headlights “adapt” and point in that direction. As you traverse windy, dark roads light pours around the curves and gives you a clear and illuminated view.

12. Active head restraints

Upon collision, the active head restraint jerks forward to “catch” the head. This diminishes the risk of whiplash and neck injury from a rear-end accident.

13. Emergency brake assist

Emergency brake assist senses when you’re braking hard, and adds more stopping power automatically. The idea is to prevent crashes, and make unavoidable ones less damaging.

14. Sudden stop breaks

SuddenStop has one purpose; to keep you from getting rear-ended. You stomp the brakes, and it goes into a frenzied display of ultrabright LED lights. It should be enough to smack any lackadaisical drivers behind you out of their daydreams.

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15. Airbag Seatbelts

The Mercedes R & D department is working out the kinks on a new type of air bag system. The technology fires two airbags simultaneously - one from behind the passenger (within the seat itself) and one from the front (within the seat belt). If the system does see the light of day, it would make Mercedes cars one of the safest ever manufactured.