Vehicle Safety

Every parent lives in fear of the phone call – you know the one. The call that changes life as you know it. It is the phone call that spawns an explosion of questions and speculation as you reach for your spouse’s arm. It is the hospital, and your child has been involved in a car accident. Images of your son or daughter flood your mind as you close your eyes and begin to pray.

But the call doesn’t end when you hang up the phone. It doesn’t end as you try and ask how this could happen. Instead, it is the beginning of what will become your everyday. And your left grabbing at your heart while an avalanche of loss threatens to carry it away.

A parent’s nightmare is receiving that phone call. For a close friend of mine, the phone call came twice. Two sons. Two separate times. Both lost forever to traffic accidents that could have been prevented.

As I write this, my heart feels heavy and butterflies gnaw at my gut. I didn’t know my friend when he lost his first son. I did know him when he lost his second. I remember his eyes and the look in them the day we buried his son. I can see them now as clearly as I did when we gathered to pray, and then to say goodbye.

There is technology that ensures a better vehicle safety. The problem – it’s not available in every vehicle. I can spend the remainder of this post talking about the costs and the politics, but I won’t. Nothing is as final as death. And so there shouldn’t be anything to prevent the progression, or evolution, of technologies for vehicle safety.

So instead I’ll list a few of the technologies that look promising. And if you happen to be reading this, and a conversation comes up one day about vehicle safety, maybe you’ll remember my friend and what his family went through. If that happens, then tell someone about what is out there and how it can save lives. Awareness is half the battle.


Blind Spot Detection – hands down this has got to be one of my favorites. Cannot tell you how many times I’ve been on the receiving end of somebody flipping me the bird because I cut them off.

Cameras & Displays – these technologies are both small enough and cheap enough to use everywhere in a car. For the display, use the vehicle's largest display, the windshield. Couple that with an eye-tracking feature and you can activate areas of the display as the driver moves their eyes around. Conceivably we can create a view that lets you see all around the vehicle at the same time; a panoramic with drive.

Cross Path Detection – this is the technology that could have saved my friend’s son. At the core it is a series of small radar detection sensors that is tied back to the vehicle’s computer system. Collectively the array of sensors alert the driver when other vehicles are in your path.

Attention Assist – the car knows when you are too tired to drive.

Driving Responsibly – there is no technology for this. Just throwing it in at the end to close the post. Teach your kids how to drive responsibly. And by that I mean by example. Don’t drive while texting. Don’t change lanes without proper notice. Basically don’t drive in any way, shape or form, that you wouldn’t want someone else doing in the vehicle next to you.