Safety

With major questions still unresolved about sudden acceleration incidents in Toyotas and other vehicles, Washington is turning to NASA engineers and the broader scientific community to examine everything from mechanical defects and human error to electronic controls and electromagnetic interference.

On Tuesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the start of two major investigations designed to look deeper into potential causes of unintended vehicle acceleration, which have been tied to a number of accidents, including some fatal ones. The issue has blown up into a major problem for the auto industry and for Toyota especially, leading to a massive … Read more

Ever since California passed its no-texting-while-driving law, we've seen a steady stream of mobile apps aimed at overcoming the temptation. Most are marketed to parents of rebellious teens and lock down certain phone features, like texting, e-mail, and placing calls after sensing movement of 10 miles per hour or so. TextArrest is one such freemium application we've seen at CTIA 2010, and many others abound in a section of the show floor carved out specifically for mobile driving solutions.

As with some of the others, TextArrest--which also has a commercial solution for policing a company's professional drivers--takes … Read more

A top Toyota executive reaches out in this YouTube video.

In the video, which popped up online on Monday, Kristen Tabar, general manager of the Toyota Technical Center, talks about the test lab in Japan and the testing process.

Since the January 21 recall announcement for accelerator pedal problems, Toyota has been under public scrutiny. This is an interesting look at what Toyota is doing to ensure safety in its cars.

Motolingo's Motoriety is a neat tool that marries the data your car is generating in real time with the power of a smartphone to bring some pretty modern capabilities to older cars. There's hardware, software, and a Web service involved in the product, but it looks like it should all work together well.

The hardware component is a small black box that you plug into your car's diagnostic port (all cars built after about 1996 have them). It communicates via Bluetooth to software on your smartphone and monitors things like road speed, engine performance, and the causes … Read more

iPhones can be great driving companions--unless you routinely tweet, text, or otherwise fiddle with the device while behind the wheel. That's a surefire way to get yourself--and possibly others--killed.

Aha Radio for iPhone helps you keep your eyes on the road. The app provides a dashboard-friendly, oversize interface for everything from podcasts and local traffic to Facebook and iPod playlists.

That interface consists of four giant icons per page, the idea being to make them more at-a-glance accessible to drivers. You can customize the arrangement of these icons to your liking and choose exactly what content Aha Radio should … Read more

It's 2010 for goodness sake! Where the hell are the self-driving cars?

With all of the advances in vehicle automation and safety technology, that elusive autopilot button may actually be closer than you might think. To illustrate this point, we've rounded up and explained a collection of current and future car technologies that we think will be the building blocks of the self-driving car of the future.

Subaru put automotive journalists behind the wheel of the company's latest WRX, WRX STI, and Impreza models at the Subaru Ice Driving Event in Park City, Utah.

The high-altitude event was to highlight Subaru's all-wheel drive on a half-mile track. Subaru's latest models offer rally-style handling in the most extreme road conditions, including the combination of ice, snow, and gravel.

Last week Ford announced its new Police Interceptor model, which is based on the new Taurus and is replacing the outgoing Crown Victoria model. Recognizing that Ford's Police Interceptor won out against the previously popular Chevrolet Caprice patrol vehicle, we took a stroll through the history of police vehicles.

Police have always been at the forefront of automotive technology, incorporating telecommunications gear and computers long before similar devices found their way into civilian cars. Motorola sold the first two-way radio for police cars in 1940, and it wasn't until the '60s that Citizens' Band radio came … Read more

Although the Audi quattro four-wheel drive system has been around since 1980, and has gone through technical upgrades, it's principle has remained the same. The quattro system utilizes the front and rear axles to distribute power between all four wheels in order to allow for maximum control and safety.

This animated Web video illustrates how the technology works on the new Audio RS5, which was unveiled last week at the Geneva Auto Show.