We have come a long way from the early days of automobiles with nothing but a small and brittle chassis to cars that will do their best to prevent and save lives. Obviously, safety in cars is the biggest concern. If a car is not safe, you cannot expect it to sell well. Even your entry-level Honda Civic has excellent safety and driver assistance features, just like a mid-level Ford Explorer, or a high-end 
Cadillac Escalade.

With the government mandating various safety regulations which are essential to selling a car in the US, manufacturers have taken some extra steps. With more and more driver assistance features – some of which feel luxurious at this point – manufacturers are getting pretty creative. Here you can take a look at the top 10 most exciting and cool technology that will make cars safer in the future -

Infra-red headlights

The headlights we use today are mostly LED with some low-level cars having halogen lamps. While there are dedicated fog lights, not every car features it and requires extra lamps to be added near the front bumper. Wouldn’t it be a lot more convenient if we could have a single lamp that could perform both of those functions?

This is where infra-red headlights come in. Using infra-red, these headlights can help you view the road during fog, snow, or hailstorms. Infra-red has a higher wavelength than visible light and hence, scatters way less in such conditions.

External airbags

You have heard about airbags and might even have experienced them. But they are inside the car, how about them being outside? Some manufacturers are thinking of implementing this idea of putting airbags in the front of a car.

This is mainly to save pedestrians or animals from a fatal crash. If the sensors in the car detect a crash with an animal or a pedestrian, these airbags would deploy and could potentially be life-saving.

3D tires

3D tires are the thing of the future. Instead of using rubber, some prototypes of 3D airless tires have been made. These are created using 3D printers and can never be punctured. No more flat tires mean no more cars getting out of control and causing crashes. But it will require some research before becoming a thing. Additionally, there can also be shape-shifting tires, which could bend their shape according to the terrain, offering you the best grip on any landscape or weather. They would automatically go back to normal when you return to a normal road.

Animal detection

Hitting an animal will probably kill it, especially if it's small. However, the converse is also true. A deer appearing out of nowhere in front of the car could lead to a loss of control and a fatal crash.

There are a lot of deer-related accidents occurring in America each year. So, to avoid this, many manufacturers will implement sensors and infra-red cameras which can detect the animals that could potentially come in front of the vehicle. Then, the sensors will apply brakes accordingly to come to a halt.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication

Mercedes already has something like this and they dubbed it “Car-to-X communication”. A network of cars on the road will be created which will not only help other drivers know about traffic and congestion but also what’s going on, on the road. Pedestrian detection, detection of other vehicles, accidents on the road, speed of other cars will all be shared among the cars on the road. This will make the roads much safer.

Augmented Reality Windshield

AR windshields sound pretty cool and they actually are too. Basically like a large version of a heads-up display, it will cover your entire windshield. Here, you can view all the details about your car – such as the speed, fuel gauge, odometer, tachometer, etc.

It will also use arrows to provide you with directions, as entered in the navigation. It could also display stuff on the windshield from the infotainment system. You wouldn’t have to take your eyes off the road at all.

Biometrics

If you have seen Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, you must already be familiar with this tech. Basically, the car will be using biometric authentication as a means to get inside it. Like our phones, there would be fingerprint sensors in the car that would give you access to the door.

Gone will be the days of pesky keys and biometrics will take over. It would also be much safer since you wouldn’t have to worry about losing your key and no one except you would be able to unlock your car. Maybe they could use facial recognition too.

Active occupant health monitoring

Drivers and occupants could also hugely benefit from active health monitoring systems. This system would be able to monitor the health of the occupants inside, especially the driver. There would be sensors and other technologies that would be able to tell whether a person is suffering from a sudden attack, such as a cardiac arrest or low blood pressure.

Driving in such situations could lead to accidents and could also result in the fatality of pedestrians and/or other cars. These systems could also measure if a driver is DUI. Overall, it could be very helpful and safe.

Self-driving cars

We all would dream about the future where we would have cars that would drive themselves. Well, that is not science fiction anymore. Thanks to Tesla and other pioneers, self-driving autonomous cars are very much a thing now. Granted, it still has a long way to go and needs a lot of refining, but cars can drive without input from the driver.

Such a car houses a myriad of sensors and cameras and the software makes numerous adjustments each second and drives the car accordingly. If all cars on the road are self-driving, you take human error out of the equation. With that, the roads would be a much safer place, potentially without any accidents.

Brain-connected driving

We are not talking about a science-fiction movie here, but this actually might become a thing in the future. While full control over the car with just your brain might actually be popular in the next century, for now, we have to focus on its smaller version. Nissan actually started working on this in 2018.

You would wear a headset over your head and it would monitor your brain’s wavelengths. Whenever you want to make a decision, such as make a turn, or brake or accelerate; the system can automatically detect it and help you achieve that action faster. It would result in swift action that could potentially avoid a lot of accidents.