Scosche has a product out that disables your cell phone while the wheels on your vehicle are spinning. It relies on a trigger adapter that connects to any car’s OBD-II port and detects when you’re in motion. Once the app is installed on the phone, the system activated and the trigger installed, anything but handsfree calling is disabled. No texting, emailing or watching YouTube videos while driving.
Now, you might say “What’s the point when you can just unplug the trigger?” And you’d have a point if this system was destined for you. But it’s destined for mostly young drivers and fleet drivers. See, if you remove the trigger, the application sends an email of a text to the administrator of the system. That can be a concerned dad or a responsible fleet manager. And just like that, letting the kids drive the car became a little safer for everyone.
Here’s the only problem: it doesn’t appear to work on iPhones! The website lists “All Android 2.1 and above, all BlackBerry 4.5 and above, all Windows Mobile 5 & 6, all Symbian S60 (3rd Edition) and select Brew and BREWMP systems.” And “RIM, HTC, Samsung, Sanyo, Motorola, Nokia, Pantech, LG, Palm, Sony Ericsson and more.” There’s no mention of Apple or iOS anywhere. Still, lots of people don’t own iPhones.
Emergency radios aren’t the most exciting products, but when you end up needing them, you wish you’d paid attention. The more sensible of you will appreciate Eton’s FRX series of safety radios. Pictured is the FRX3, the top of the line model which comes with a couple neat features, like an LED flashlight and a USB out for recharging your cell phone. Its internal battery itself is recharged either via the top solar panel (the outline of which also glows in the dark to help you find the unit) or with some elbow grease via the crank. I played with it and it feels very rugged. Aside from AM/FM tuning, it also receives NOAA warnings, so you can know when it’s safe to stick your head out the shelter again.
Again, this is not the sort of thing you’re going to try to impress your friends with, but at $60 iin black or red, it might just be the one item you were glad you bought next time a Katrina comes around.
We last wrote about Zomm two years ago when they were launching their wireless leash product. At CES this year, the company is releasing a new device called Lifestyle Connect. The idea behind it is to make it easier to stay safe, especially for those of fragile health. The small keychain-like device connects to your Bluetooth enabled phone and gives you one-touch access to a Personal Safety Concierge. This concierge will then assist you with what you need, be it to call your friends, an ambulance or the police. This functionality is also available on the Wireless Leash from two years ago, so the real innovation comes more from the fact that the Lifestyle Connect can also monitor your connected health sensors, like glucose meters, heart-rate sensors and fall detectors, and upload the data to the cloud. It is then available to your trusted friends, health practitioners or first responders in the case of emergency, any of which can be summoned, again, with just one touch.
The Lifestyle Connect is $199 and will ship in April. If you pre-order now, you also get 3 months of concierge service thrown in.
Say you’re a police officer. Or simply someone with a knack for walking into the line of fire. You’re going to want to put the odds on your side and protect yourself. Sure, police officers usually wear vests. But they also carry clipboards, don’t they? Like for when they’re writing you a ticket? So what if that clipboard… wait for it… could also stop a bullet? That’s exactly what the Ballistic Clipboard from Impact Armor Technologies does. It’s rated to exceed NIJ IIIA specifications, which means it gives multi-hit protection from 9mm, .357, .40, and .44 mag rounds. Best of all, it has a handle and weighs less than 2.0lbs.
Awesome, right? Well… We’re not exactly sure how this works. What scenario could this be used in? Would the officer be expected to raise it up to his face in case a gun is pointed there? Is he expected to swat the bullets away? We’ve just never thought of ballistic armor as something movable; it’s usually affixed to your body. But hey, you can never be too safe, right? If that makes sense to you, it’s $150.
So your Blackberry went quiet for three days and now you’re getting some free apps? Sweet, dude! But that’s nothing compared to what some others got in Abu Dhabi and Dubai: a potential extra three days of life. It appears that the Emiratis are notorious texters-while-driving and their vehicular mortality rates happen to be five to ten times global averages. And in what may be the clearest proof of the correlation between the two, officials in Abu Dhabi reported a 40% drop in traffic accidents during the three days the Blackberry service was down while Dubai’s numbers came in at 20%.
There are no reports on the increase in post traumatic stress disorders caused by the outage.
The advent of GPS navigation devices, elaborate car stereos and touch screen interfaces have made staying focused on the road, while driving, more difficult than ever. Gone are the days when choosing between AM or FM was your biggest distraction. So at CEATEC a company called ALPS is showing off a concept design for a steering wheel that features touch sensitive pads in lieu of a complicated array of buttons.
Adjusting the volume of your music, or skipping tracks, is as easy as making swiping gestures just like on your smartphone. By centralizing all of these commands into one area, there’s less hunting and pecking for the driver as they look for a specific button. Which in turn, keeps their eyes on the road. The steering wheels could even incorporate handwriting recognition. Making it easier to enter a destination into a nav unit instead of battling with less than perfect voice recognition.
I’m going to knock them a few points for abusing the term ‘high definition’, but otherwise Etymotic’s new HD•15 electronic earplugs look like a far better alternative to those yellow or orange foam tubes you keep swiping from work. Your run-of-the-mill earplug simply blocks all (or most) noises from entering your ear canal. So while they’re fine for activities like sleeping, they’re not so great when you also need to hear people talking to you.
So the HD•15′s feature a built-in microphone that monitors the ambient noise around the user. When it’s loud, such as at a construction site, it naturally blocks out the harsh noises from equipment and vehicles. But when that din dies down and you want to talk to someone, the earplugs detect the change in noise and allow voices to be heard via their mic/speaker system. They can even be used to boost particularly quiet sounds or voices, but automatically return to protecting your hearing when the ambient noises get loud again. As you can probably expect, at $499/pair they’re not cheap. But they look to be a lot more comfortable to wear than a large pair of headphones or ear protectors, while still letting you hear when you need to.
I’m convinced that 80% of the world’s carabiner production is used by first year college students. But if you’re just using one to hold your dorm room key, student I.D. and meal card, a locking mechanism isn’t necessary. For the remaining 20% which are used to keep mountain climbers securely attached to their safety lines, being able to easily and securely lock and unlock them is an important feature. And that’s what prompted Black Diamond to engineer their new Magnetron auto-locking Carabiner.
On either side of the carabiner’s brightly colored locking ‘arms’ you’ll find a strong magnet that’s attracted to a steel insert, keeping the locking mechanism closed until you depress both sides to open it. And once opened, the opposing magnets actually have the same polarity so they repel each other, keeping the arms held open until the carabiner is closed again. (If my description is making things sound more confusing than they really are, just watch this promotional video from Black Diamond which eventually shows how the new system works.)
Don’t run out to your local outdoor shop just yet to pick one up though. They won’t be available until July 2012 at the earliest, presumably to allow for ample safety testing first.
Smoke alarms are primarily designed to wake and or/alert people in a building that a fire has broken out (or that their chocolate chip cookies are burning) so that they can safely escape in time, and contact the proper emergency services. But the Firetext goes one step further. It actually features a SIM card slot, and when it detects smoke it will send a text to up to 4 different numbers. I assume it’s meant as a way to alert people to an emergency situation when they’re away from the building where the detector is located. As opposed to providing a more effective way to alert our generation of a fire, who seems to have developed a knee-jerk ‘gotta check it right away!’ reaction to their phone’s ‘new text message’ alert. Even when dead asleep in the middle of the night.
It’s still powered by a standard 9V battery, which is good for about 36 alarms. But in the hopeful event that it never goes off, on a single battery it should stay vigil for about 5 years. And it’s available now for ~$144 (£89.99) plus the cost of the SIM and your local carrier’s text messaging service I presume.
Related Tags: Cellphones, Safety
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