Alexa pays for gas
Drivers can soon use Alexa to pay for a tank of gas from the comfort of their vehicle, reports CNN. ExxonMobil and Amazon announced a partnership in early January that will allow voice-activated fuel purchases in vehicles with Alexa built-in as well as from Alexa-enabled smartphones and other devices. The platform was slated to launch in April at more than 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the United States. Customers using Alexa to pay for gas will be asked to confirm the station location and the pump number. Transactions will then be processed using Amazon Pay with payment information stored in their Amazon account.
My dog is my co-pilot
Does your dog do ride-alongs? If so, assure his or her safety – and yours – with restraining devices to avoid interfering with the driver and to prevent injury in a collision, says an article in The New York Times. While safety systems intended to protect humans are regulated by government agencies, there is little in the way of oversight or equivalent requirements for pet restraints, the author points out. This is not only a shortfall in keeping dogs secure, it also has serious implications for the driver and passengers. In a collision, an unrestrained animal becomes a projectile with the potential to cause enormous harm. In a typical 30 mile-an-hour head-on crash, a 50-pound dog flies forward with an impact force of 1,500 pounds. Many drivers find that the most practical compromise between protection and comfort for their dog is a travel harness, which straps around the dog’s neck and behind the front legs, with its main support across the chest. The harness should connect directly to the car’s safety belt, with the belt passing through an attachment point on the back of the harness.
It worked for Hansel and Gretel
Ford has stitched together existing technologies to create a feature called Breadcrumbs, which helps off-roaders find their way back to civilization, reports Digital Trends. It’s available on most of the company’s trucks, including the Ranger and members of the F-Series family. Like Hansel and Gretel, the technology leaves behind digital “breadcrumbs” so drivers who are hopelessly lost can glance at the dashboard-mounted touchscreen to quickly see where they’ve been. The technology works with navigation data to drop one virtual pin per second when traveling off the beaten path. The reference points show up as little blue dots on the map. Breadcrumbs needs to be manually turned on with a few taps of the touchscreen, so it doesn’t track your real-time location.
Autonomous vehicles might make you carsick
If the future lets people focus on work instead of driving, many of us will have to conquer motion sickness to read memos (or tweets), according to an article in The New York Times. Researchers are working on some fixes. Starting in 2017, Monica Jones, a transportation researcher at the University of Michigan, led a series of studies in which more than 150 people were strapped into the front seat of a 2007 Honda Accord. They were wired with sensors and set on a ride that included roughly 50 left-hand turns and other maneuvers. Each subject was tossed along the same twisty route for a second time but also asked to complete a set of 13 simple cognitive and visual tasks on an iPad Mini. About 11% of the riders got nauseated or, for other reasons, asked that the car be stopped. Four percent vomited. Ms. Jones wants to help people avoid and treat motion sickness. But at this early stage of her research, she’s merely aiming to better understand the “fundamentals of human response.” For example, there might be clues in how riders who get carsick hold their heads, maintain their posture or position the mobile devices they’re using.