Gadgetory

you ever notice how the fat cats with their expensive cars get all the tech toys first but lately we've been getting the last laugh as all that tech trickles down to our cars and does so faster every year I'm Brian Cooley with my top five car safety technologies that used to only protect rich guys but now is keeping us alive - we're gonna rank these by a combination of how common they are and how commonly you will likely use them let's go number five is adaptive cruise control and this is the technology that doesn't just maintain your speed on the highway but also the distance between you and the car ahead it debuted in Japan on the high-end mitsubishi diamante in 1995 didn't come to the US until 2000 the Lexus LS 430 today it's fairly common you'll find it on cars as affordable as the Mazda 6 even the Mitsubishi Outlander and look for big growth here largely because the same parts and software that make this system work also enable forward collision avoidance tech it's kind of a twofer number four is the rear view camera go back to 1956 to find the first on the Buick Centurion a show car but there it was way back then then it just went away we never saw one again till the early 2000s when LCDs began to show up in the dash and that gave the camera image a place to live today almost all cars at least offer them but there's still too often optional equipment even on a Bentley Flying Spur the feds have repeatedly balked in terms of making these required and so they're still typically optional number three is the airbag the 74 Olds Toronado was perhaps the first production car with what they then called the air cushion restraint system had a very low take rate so it kind of drifted and went away then an 81 Mercedes put it front and center on the new s-class and you know their reputation for safety by 1989 front airbags for the driver were required and by 1998 across the front row today you can hardly count the number of airbags in most cars 10-11-12 is quite common number two ABS anti-lock brakes March of 1969 ABS arrives on the Concorde then in 1970 Ford made it optional on the rear wheels of Continentals and in 1971 Chrysler made it available on four wheels in the Imperial the EU has required it on all cars since 2007 but get this the US still doesn't some mumbo jumbo about how to accurately test its effectiveness as of 2012 however I think I stopped seeing any cars sold without it in the US regardless of regulations before I get you to number one here a couple technologies that won't be that Lane keep assist and blind spot monitoring that's because so far insurance industry data shows rather tepid improvement in driver safety with those technologies they just start making a big difference yet the number one trickle-down safety tech has got to be ESC electronic stability control it first shows up in really polished form on the big Mercedes and BMWs of 1987 then as of model year 2012 it's now required on all new cars in the US simply put stability control is unbelievable it reduces fatal rollovers by 70 percent and reduces all fatal crashes in cars by 14% and double that in SUVs in many ways it's kind of a cure for the lousy driver for more technology like this all about high-tech cars and modern driving that's CNET on cars.com a lot of top fives await you there i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you