How Your Car is Smarter than Your Phone

Cars are smarter than phones. Not just those little smart cars – all cars. They are smarter than phones and always have been. Consider drunk-driving prevention. Ever since the early 1970s, your car has had the ability to be fitted with a breathalyzer connected to the ignition switch, and the car will refuse to turn on if you're drunk.

A phone, on the other hand, will let you dial that ex-girlfriend all night long, no matter how drunk you are. There is no smart phone breathalyzer. You see? Cars are smarter than phones.

There are a number of practical ways that cars are smarter than phones. From integrated digital technology to mechanical automation, it seems that George Jetson's flying saucer car is closer to becoming a reality every day. Here are several great examples of recent and forthcoming advancements in automotive technology that will leave your smart phone in the dust.

Image Licensed Under Attribution

Anti-Theft

With smart car technology, most notably the On-Star system, a car can shut itself off if it needs to. For example, if your car is stolen, On-Star can remotely kill the engine, bringing the thieves to a grinding halt before they make it to the chop shop. Also, biometric systems are emerging with fingerprint ID systems, with which you need fingerprint ID in order to start the engine. This way you're safe even if your keys are stolen along with the car. Your phone? Well, if it gets stolen, all you receive is a higher bill.

Self-Operation

Cars and trucks are becoming fully automated. Many cars come standard with certain smart technology such as vibrating seats as a rear obstacle warning and sensors that activate the brakes if something jumps out in front of the vehicle.

Image provided by: Guest blogging community

There are also self-parking cars, making parallel parking in the city much easier. Google has even developed a self-driving car, now licensed for testing on public streets in less-populated areas such as rural Nevada. Your smart phone cannot operate itself at all. The closest it comes to this feat is its voice recognition software.

High-Tech Windshields

Imagine for a moment that you have a question about where you are going or what you will pass along the way. Imagine you need to more closely monitor your engine's temperature gauge or the pressure in a tire on a long trip. Now, imagine that John Madden is sitting in a large skybox over the interstate on which you are driving.

He starts drawing diagrams of pressure gauges, maps, engine readouts, and anything else you may need, superimposed on the windshield on top of the outside world. This is coming soon, and it's already popping up at auto conventions around the world.

It's estimated that these high-tech windshields will be available for widespread distribution at some point in the next decade. The point is that you don't have to stop what you're doing to get this information, nor do you have to take your eyes off the road. Your phone? You'd have to stop everything and manually access this information, which is not that smart in many cases!

    Chris

About the Guest Author:

Chris Turberville-Tully works for H.R. Owen car dealership which specializes in new and used luxury vehicles including used Bentley.