A new car safety system unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show has attracted a lot of interest from the motoring press. It is seen as a breakthrough in on-board safety management and can be fitted to almost any vehicle.
It works by making use of freely available energy to detect a common safety breach and resolve it automatically. When the car is slowing down, energy is recovered from the braking system, converted to electricity and stored in a set of batteries.
This is then used to power a camera mounted on a bracket at the rear of the vehicle. The camera points forward and has a view of the back of the car including its registration plate. In the event that the car should exceed the speed limit at any time, the camera records a picture of the car and saves it to a hard disk.
Once you get home it is simply a matter of connecting a USB cable from your car to your PC, and you can download the images to a police website. From that moment it will only a matter of a few days before a speeding fine, and possibly a court summons, arrives in the post.
The new system is expected to be available as an optional extra on most cars from next year at an uplift of around £1500.
