Autoblog

We've all done it; you're halfway through a lane change and suddenly a horn sounds and snaps you to reality. Whether you failed to check your blind spot adequately, or just plain oblivious, Ford's introducing a two features to help you out. The Blind Spot Mirror and Cross Traffic Alert with Blind Spot Monitoring System will arrive in 2009, and one offers a low-tech solution, while the other appears to be a Volvo feature trickling down.

Elegantly simple, the Blind Spot Mirror cleverly integrates a convex mirror into the regular mirror glass, much like the generations-old side-reducing mirrors available in other markets with a concave area to aid in viewing blind spots. The Cross-Traffic alert system uses radar to monitor traffic perpendicular to the back end when reversing. During forward travel, the radar system is used to detect and warn of vehicles traveling in your blind spot. The radar tricks sound to us like Ford leveraging Volvo's BLIS system, that monitors blind spots and lights a pilot LED when there's a vehicle there, and we worry that it will make drivers even less attentive, but then, we realize nobody is paying attention now, so if this rig raises awareness, road safety should improve. Ford's planning on bundling these new safety features along with reverse sensing and rearview cameras to create a more comprehensive portfolio of electronic safety aids in response to customers indicating a desire for better mirrors and safety systems. Press release after the jump

[Source:Ford]

After driving the same route to and from work every day shouldn't your car know every bump in the road? Every curve? Every blind intersection and speed trap? Ford agrees, and is working with several partners to develop an automotive system that uses navigation and GPS systems to learn the dangers of oft-driven roads.

Ford of Europe recently presented its ideas to the PReVENT group. Ford envisions a car that learns where danger lurks and helps the driver avoid it. Once the car knows where you swerve or slow down, it would anticipate those moves and, if you didn't act quickly enough, would take action without your input. Or if there is a particularly bad curve in your route, refocus the headlights seconds before you reach it to make the turn safer.

Ford admits in its press release (in full after the jump) the technology has a long way to go before showing up on a Monroney, but it has already begun trying to anticipate legal hurdles like how quickly and to what extent the system would step in.

The PReVENT project is part of the European Union's Intelligent Car Initiative that's working toward safer, less-polluting cars and its partners include DaimlerChrysler, Audi, BMW, Renault, Volvo, Volkswagen and numerous suppliers and technology companies.