Automotive Gadgets

See if you can figure out what differentiates the two dummies in the photo to the left. If you said that one of them has an inflatable seat belt, then you are correct! (Of course, that is not the only difference, but that is neither here nor there.)

These inflatable seatbelts are part of Ford’s push to make our automobiles a little more safer from accidents. They will be available starting next year, making their debut in the 2010 Ford Explorer. (I think that most car companies have already released their 2010 models by now, so this should be available now.)

Ford has said that they want the inflatable seat belts to be the standard for all of their cars, and hope that they will succeed in their design of reducing head, chest, and neck injuries. By the way, my source says that these new inflatable seatbelts are considered to be “more comfortable”, but it doesn’t say whether that is before or after they are inflated.

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For those of you that hate getting preoccupied with things at home, only to spin around and see your spouse has managed to get inside and stand right behind you without you noticing.  You might need something to announce their presence so that you don’t have a heart attack every single day.  Plus you’ll get to reminisce about the good old days when gas stations weren’t all self serve.

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Hooking up certain hitches can be difficult with help.  Some allow for you to be a little off, but others it requires being extremely precise.  Then to actually pull off hooking up a trailer, boat or camper on your own is a tedious and time consuming task.  I suppose it is entirely possible, but it’s probably going to take you a while to get it right.  Usually you’re far better off waiting until help arrives.  Well this Trailer Hitch Alignment Tool will make it possible for you to hook everything up without any help.

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If you have a gadget you rely heavily on that requires AA batteries, you might invest in this battery charger.  It’s always nice to have a battery charger at home, but if you’re outside of the house when your gadget dies, that won’t help you.  Usually that leaves you stuck buying new batteries, well instead of doing that you can charge up your batteries within your car.

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Most of us have had the joy of dealing with a dead battery in our car and somehow it always seems to happen under the worst of conditions.  You know the ones, dark and either snowing or raining.  It being dark is definitely a requirement though.  Well with these jumper cables you won’t have quite so much difficulty managing to charge your battery in the dark.  These cables might look a touch alien, but they’ll still do the trick.

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There’s nothing quite as disappointing as taking a nice big drink of coffee only to discover you’ve waited just a little too long.  Then instead of getting hot or even warm coffee, you get a taste of cold coffee.  Which, when the coffee is meant to be hot, is always gross.  Well instead of trying to guzzle down your coffee or tea faster in order to make sure it stays hot the whole way through, you could pick up this travel mug.  It’s insulated like every other travel mug out there, plus it has a built-in heater.

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I can’t decide if this horse powered car is moving forward with the times or taking them back to a time before cars.  Yes, you’re in a car and it has wheels, but it’s powered by a literal horse.   Which is not much better than planting yourself in a horsedrawn carriage.  Admittedly this is actually faster than a buggy would be though.  A buggy goes about 5-10 mph, whereas this car concept can go up to 28 mph.  Either way, you’re not exactly going to be flying down the highway.

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There are a lot of cars that come with built-in heaters in the seats and even if your car doesn’t have that, you can always put something in your car to solve that problem.  One thing you don’t see a whole lot is something on the seat to keep you a little more cool.  Which during a long road trip or when you’re stuck in a traffic jam would be really nice.  There are times when the air conditioning just doesn’t cut it.  For those times, there is this seat cooler.

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