Should you be in the market for a dash cam?

Why would you want one? Accidents can happen to anyone at anytime. A dash cam can be helpful to drivers in the event something goes wrong while driving your vehicle. Consider that a dash cam is more of a protective device. And if you have one, hopefully you will never need to take advantage of pulling the footage from it. Since that is the case, it may be hard to justify the purchase of one. But if you do, it can be worth many times the initial cost of the unit.

If I have peaked your interest, you may want to take a look at the following article that discusses what you should consider when buying a unit and comparing several of the dash cams that are on the market.

Automatic Pro now offers free 3G service

When I read the post describing this product it really began to intrigue me. First, let me say that I wish it were free 4G but any “G” is better than none. This device plugs into your car’s OBD-II port, unlocks the data in your car’s on-board computer and connects it to the internet. While that is a concern to me as far as security, I’m planning on looking into the repercussions of adding this to a vehicle.

This is the same concern I would have for any of the IoT devices that are constantly showing up around us. There are an interesting list of things that this device will bring to the table that might be of interest to you though.

The primary reason this device was created was allow you to connect into the on board computer system of your car to allow you to also access the diagnostic information about your vehicle. The Pro version takes it one step further to actually connect the device through an internet connection to applications to make use of that data. Many other things become available to take advantage of once this has been unlocked.

Have you ever forgotten where you have parked your car? Now this device provides the ability to find it again. Tracking driving statistics is also an interesting feature. I need to provide my driving information for sales/service trips to the IRS every year so this device along with one of several available Apps can automatically log the exact mileage for these trips without me having to write it down.

Interesting enough this also works with IFTTT and the Amazon Echo. I am also playing with a Pebble watch right now and there is a an App available to connect that as well.

I sure you guessed that I am excited about this device, so I placed an order for one for my Jeep. I’ll get back to you later after I have put it through its paces.

Uber may be planning to add driverless cars to its fleet in Pittsburgh as early as this month.

Apparently they have been testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh for eighteen months and are getting ready to take the next step and actually implement them. Obviously if this is implemented we are going to see a big change in cost of using this type of system versus the current one. Uber recently purchased Otto which has equipment that can be retrofitted into current vehicles to create a driverless car. Otto initially was launched to do bring this technology to the trucking industry.

According to TechCrunch:

The company will deploy around 100 modified Volvo XC90s outfitted with self-driving equipment. Each vehicle will be staffed by one engineer, who can take the wheel as/when needed, and a co-pilot to observe and take notes. There will also be a “liquid-cooled” computer sitting in the trunk recording trip and map data.