Mercedes-Benz E-Class and it's "Intelligent Partner Assist"

The 2011 E-Class has come equipped with many incredible safety features that have made it catch the nickname "Intelligent partner".  If a collision is imminent the car will automatically brake and if you have someone in your blind spot. These two new pieces of technology along with others help the E-class become one of the most advanced and safest luxury sedans on the road.

 The blind-spot is an area where the vision of the person driving can not be specified to an are of the car. To learn more about blind spots click here. Whenever a vehicle goes into your blind spot the car beeps and a light turn on your side view mirrors signaling to be aware and cautious of your sides. This can help you with driving on a highway if you decide to change lanes.

 The Brake Assist PLUS is an optional safety feature in the cars. The car uses a radar the goes out 200 meters to detect if there are any oncoming objects and can realize if it is going to hit it depending on the speed it is going at. It increases the braking power and completely comes to stop or reduces impact. I believe this can save lives and help distracted drivers.

  Citations:
The new mercedes benz e-class. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cargomotors.co.za/Modules_FE/layout1/displayfull.asp?id=94

Drunk Driving and the Stand Against It

There is new technology being tested that will help keep drunk drivers of the road. Basically if you walk into the car and you just breath normally the car should be able to detect your blood-alcohol level and realize if it is safe enough for you to get on the road if not the car simply doesn't turn on. Another form of detecting if you are to drunk to drive is through tact, or touch. Cars have advanced to a point that now a days people just touch the "Engine ignition button" and they car starts by itself but if you touch this button and the car detects your blood alcohol level is too high it doesn't start. Although this will take many years to perfect I believe that this is a great idea and will help reduce the amount of drunk driving related deaths annually. In 2009 about 11,000 people were killed in the United States due to drunk driving alone, if this technology is released to the public I feel it will help people and save lives. Do you think that this is a good piece of technology and is something that should continue developing ? or Do you feel that this is just a waste of time?

Citations:
Nguyen, T.C. (2011, January 31). New car technology can stop drunks from driving. Retrieved from http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/new-car-technology-can-stop-drunks-from-driving/6167

A Car Changes The Industry

In the late 1950s, early 1960s cars were typically wide and long. The cars during this time were very slow and difficult to drive. The Ford Motor Company change one of its vehicles and launches the four door Thunderbird as a  replacement of the two seater model from the early 1950s but the two seater Thunderbird was so popular that Ford Motor Company was looking for new ways to create something similar to the Thunderbird. After much trail and error Ford released its first mustang concept car in 1962 named "Mustang I" named after the P-51Mustang Fighter planes from World War II.

  In April 16, 1964 the Ford Mustang was aired on television commercials every where from 9:30 to 10:00.  The very next day Ford Motor Company introduced the Mustang to the world for the first time at the New York World's Fair. That day 22,000 orders were placed on the Ford Mustang, something absolutely incredible at the time but so was the Mustang. The Mustang was the first ever "Pony Car" or a sporty, compact, affordable car. This one car was in a class of its own, revolutionizing the car industry to what it is today.Throughout 1964 to mid 1965 ,the Ford Mustang had no competitors but in 1966-1967 the Mustangs competitors (Plymouth Barracuda, Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Charger, Pontiac GTO etc.) quickly responded putting bigger, better engines into their vehicles and the era of the large, big block luxury car was not more. What if Ford never decided to release the mustang and didn't care about what the consumers wanted and didn't want to invest/risk their money on something like the mustang ? Do you think you'd be seeing the cars you see today ? I think that we would still be driving modern versions of mammoth style cars.

Citations:
Book: Campisano, Jim. (1997). Mustang. New York, NY: Michael Friedman Publishing Group, Inc.

Electronic Cars, The "Perfect" Future ?

Nissan has come out with the first ever all electric vehicle, they named it the Nissan Leaf. It's a front motor, Front Wheel Drive (FWD) like most japanese vehicles but what different is its fuel... Well it doesn't have any you just put it to charge at home and your ready for the next day to go to work or do your daily deeds. The fact that Nissan made a mass production car like the Leaf to me isn't necessarily, the car goes zero to sixty in 12 seconds faster then some minivans and suvs but the fact that you can't hear anything come out of the car. You should be able to hear cars, its a necessity not just a pleasure. To me hearing a car rev up to 7000 RPM is the sweetest tune well that is if the car sounds nice but in a car like the Leaf you can't even hear the car's engine to see if its on or no. This to me is dangerous, when you hear a car coming down a road you mainly hear its exhaust system.
    This is when new technology comes into play. Nissan created VSP or Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians. What they did is they create a sort of artificial sound so when the vehicle travels at low speeds throughout neighborhoods people can hear the car coming. The noise is loud enough for pedestrians to hear but not load enough to get into the car and distract the driver. Now the driver can switch off the VSP but it automatically switches back on the next ignition cycle or the next time the person starts the car. Do you find it annoying that soon cars won't be making the sounds of the exhaust but soon enough will be making loud annoying beeping sounds down your neighborhoods ?

Citations
Magazine: Motor Trend. Lyon, Peter. (2010, August/October). The electric future is here. 62(10), 76-80.
Website: Nissan Leaf. Wikipedia. Retrieved April 28, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#Safety

Park-Assist

This week I wanted to start of with something that Ive found interesting. Park- assist has been around for a couple of years now. First sold in for the first time in a Prius hybrid in 2003 it was designed to help people to not worry about parallel parking, the car will just park themselves. At first Toyota designed the park-assist not to park itself but to give the persons instruction on how to park. In 2006 Toyota designed to equip an upgraded park assist making the car literally park itself into a parallel parking are using sensors and a highly advanced computer. This may create problems though what if these assists go wrong and
put someone's like at risk. These aids may help us alot but they can also hurt you.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/self-parking-car.htm In this article Ed is completely for self parking explaining how much of a relief it is on your daily commute in a big city and not having to worry about denting or scratching your car in the "stressful" process of parking a car correctly before the person behind you gets angry and starts yelling at you. What I'm worried about is that how long will it take to before they create a "driving assist" and the relationship between a man and his car is no more because something is a chaufer to you and taking you everywhere. It may seem crazy to trust your life in a computer but if something like this is released to the public, everyone would want to have the "latest and greatest" thing out. Technology is advancing at an incredible way so don't be alarmed if you see your neighbor being driven into his driveway. Do you think that the future should look like this?
Citation

Grabianowski, E. (n.d.). How self-parking cars work . Retrieved from http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/self-parking-car.htm

WHAT'S THE POINT?

The car industry has been advancing at a quick rate, since the invention of the seatbelt used in a vehicle by volvo in 1849, to the invention of  airbags patented in 1968 by Allen Breed. Safety has been an issue in vehicles but What are safety features?

This Link leads to a site explaining an every day safety feature and what they do.

Automobile safety is the study of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurence and consequences of automobile accidents.

Throughout this blog I will be explaining where the inventions of some safety features derived from and every week go into depth on a modern safety feature that I think will help benefit humans. Hopefully someone else is interested in this also and shares a common interest with me.
  

The Beginning Of It All

My teacher assigned a research for project for my class on blogging and elaborating for the next four months and as I began to think of a topic I tried to think of something that has interested me throughout my entire life and came across automobiles. Automobiles have been a huge part of my life ever since my dad brought him his new Mercedes-Benz CLK 430 I fell in love with cars and my passion has never died out. I'm always reading car magazines or researching new concept cars and details on cars. My father is a car salesman and having someone in the automotive industry makes you entire world revolve around cars. My life is normal for the most part except for the fact that my dad brings home a different car every day and I have something to look forward to everyday.

I thought this would be an easy topic just write about the something that I love but I wanted to know something about cars that I didn't exactly know already. Having heard of the death of the alumni at my old school, Kevin O'Connell, I became interested in the safety features of the vehicles and thought that it would be a great topic to write about. While many people find this boring I take at as an advantage to learn something completely different on something that I've been living with my entire life, look at cars from a different perspective. I've always been interested in safety features such as blindfold sensors, park assist(helping cars automatically parallel park and things of that matter. I'm very interested to see if someone has a common share of interest. Pl