New Garmin device makes high-end safety features widely available

New Garmin device makes high-end safety features available to everyone

For years, new safety features debuted in luxury cars which effectively put them out of the reach of most normal Earthlings. It would often be several years before things like lane departure warnings and collision avoidance made it down the chain for the mass market driver. But Garmin is about to change all that.

Read more: New ways to buy or sell a car

A real boon for young drivers

The nüviCam LMTHD is an all-in-one 6.0-inch premium navigator with built-in dash cam and driver awareness features.

At around $400, the technology is reasonably priced. Compare that to the cost of dumping a vehicle to buy another one with fancier safety features. If you had to buy these features in a new car, you’d pay between $2,500 and $4,000 to have these safety features as add-ons. Of course, they’ll be obsolete the second you buy them.

The wonder with the Garmin is that you take it and pop it in, and as the tech improves, you either replace it or do a software update and you have state-of-the-art technology available to you.

This is a great safety for you to have. I think it’s especially important when you have a car that you’re putting a brand-new driver in. This effectively lets you have state-of-the-art safety features without having to buy a whole new car.

Read more: How to find a good mechanic

Car tech of tomorrow will make us safer

For years, we’ve been in the ‘fully assist’ stage where cars are basically rolling computers that make us safer and smarter. Technologies like forward collision systems, adaptive headlights, and lane departure warning systems have greatly reduced fatalities. And let’s not forget about electronic stability control, the most important safety feature.

But that’s only a pit stop on the road to safety. The cars of the future will be a whole different game, and they will do more and more to eliminate fatalities.

Collectively, over the next few years, the improvements in technology will allow us to take fatalities down from the mid 30,000s to the lows 20,000s in terms of numbers of deaths.

Fatality rates will keep dropping from there. We won’t go to zero, but we will go very close to it. How can I be so certain? Look at air travel. It used to be a risky venture. But today, the technology in cockpits makes flying much safer than it used to be.

The automobile industry has lagged behind in that department, so that’s the next big wave that will be great for you and me.

Read more: It’s time to jettison the conventional wisdom about how to buy a new car