Gadgetory

now a lot of the innovation in cars is done not by the car companies you know but by their suppliers companies that used to supply them things like nuts and bolts and tires today supply them entire transmissions electronics and whole interiors I'm Brian Cooley with the top five of the best personal safety innovations from the pace Awards these are given to these suppliers by automotive news and Ernst & Young it's just some of the unsung names and the car tech biz here we go number five auto leaves pedestrian under hood airbag just when you thought they put an airbag everywhere inside the car Sweden's Auto leave puts one outside the car because statistics show that a lot of pedestrian injuries and deaths happen when you're hit by a car and your head wings down and finds that rigid area at the base of the windshield this puts an airbag right there to cushion you number four Continentals pedestrian impact sensor now to detect that pedestrian impact a rubber tube is laid along the inside of that flexible front bumper during an impact with a pedestrian the tube is collapsed a little and that generates a puff of air which is read by a couple of simple sensors on each end of the bumper and in 1/100 of a second they can figure out if it's a pedestrian versus a parking lot sign and fire the airbags number three valios camera and sensor module it used to be that the ultrasonic sensor is in your bump or those things that beep and the camera in the back of the body which shows you what's back there operated completely without any knowledge of each other that left the driver having to blend all that info but Francis Valeo has merged them into a single module so it all works together and it's a tiny component that has the added benefit of leaving your bumper without those little sonar dimples in it number two taqaddas center front airbag okay just when you thought they really had put an airbag everywhere including under the hood Takato works with GM to slide one in between the front seats this helps to secure the driver during a far side of the car t-bone impact or to keep the two front passengers from smashing heads and earning each other but with this and up to eight more airbags in the front of the car alone it's time for our number one number one is Auto leaves Green airbag inflator now when all these airbags go off they're typically powered by what's called a sodium azide inflator it's basically a little rocket propellant in your face and it's received some nasty headlines lately the Swedes being the Greenies they are took note and auto leave developed a bag inflator that uses mostly hydrogen and oxygen and leaves behind mostly water vapor if you could get these in a Nissan Leaf that is charged off a windmill that's pretty green now everything new in high-tech cars and modern driving over at CNET on cars.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching