Think you’d be safer if your car could tell you that you’re about to get into an accident? One community in Michigan is about to find out. About 3,000 Ann Arbor residents have had gear installed in their cars that tracks their location and the locations of other vehicles participating in the program. If it’s detected that vehicles are about to collide, a bell will sound or in some cases, a voice will issue a warning. For example, if you’re driving and a car three cars in front of you slams on its breaks, your car will alert you before you’d be able to see that a car has stopped short. If the project is successful, we may see federally mandated safety technology on all cars in the future. The biggest mystery now is how drivers will react to the warnings. Can they react fast enough? Will they react if they experience alerts too often? We’ll have a better idea when the test is over in a year.
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