Yup, you read that right. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has just been awarded a patent for a smartphone airbag. Love the fact that the issue of frail cellphones is being addressed and kudos to Mr. Bezos for coming up with any idea that might eventually pan out. Here’s the guts of the patent per the article: “It starts with a safety monitoring system that would use a gyroscope, camera, infrared beam, radar or other sensors to detect such things as motion, orientation and distance from other objects — then determine in a split second if the device is at risk of damage from impact.” Apparently the device could deploy either airbags or springs with an added propulsion system that would guide the phone to a soft landing. Pretty sci-fi if you ask me but hey, the patent office says it’s ok. I just hope they don’t come with an idiot light.
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News for Week of 12-2-12
Here are three articles that caught my eye this week. The first two have to do with distractions while driving while the third is just distracting any way you look at it.
1. What do you think? Do red-light traffic cameras cause more accidents?
2. Wow, look at this (I hope you’re not driving). As if we don’t have enough things to concentrate on behind the wheel, but this article actually says that computers for your car’s windshield would actually be “helping to improve safety.” I guess I just can’t think of a tweet I needed to see that badly (but then again, I’m kinda old and like my bad news delivered in person and not when I’m driving a 4,000 pound projectile).
3. White House wants 100% of vehicles to have black boxes by 2013. I’m just gonna leave that one alone except to say it’s 1984 all over again.
WWII Vets
This isn’t car related, but we’d just like to give a shout-out to all the WWII vets out there seeing it’s Pearl Harbor Day. Thanks Dad.