The Pros and Cons of Installing Your Car Audio System Yourself

Many people choose to install their car audio systems themselves, rather than take the car to audio specialists. There are many reasons for doing this. Some people find a lot of enjoyment in the task; other people find that it’s cheaper.

Four of the Best Safety Features You Can Add to Your Car

We might be terrified of terrorists, ebola outbreaks, and global warming, but the biggest danger for most of us is driving. The roads are responsible for far more injuries and accidents in the UK than the other three categories combined. We should be more afraid of driving than the rest.

To minimise the dangers of driving, it’s important to ensure that our cars are safe. Below, we are going to explore four of the best safety gadgets that you can install in your car. These will help to upgrade the safety rating of your vehicle, and help to keep you safe while travelling the UK’s roads. You can buy them all as aftermarket gadgets, so it doesn’t matter if your car doesn’t come with them preinstalled, you can add them afterwards.

•    GPS Vehicle-Tracking System.
An increasing number of parents are adding tracking devices to their teenagers’ cars. This isn’t so much about monitoring their whereabouts (that would be incredibly intrusive and weird), but about monitoring how they're driving. The top-of-the-range GPS trackers can tell you how fast they have been driving, and whether they did anything dangerous.

In fact, these GPS systems are so accurate and important, that certain insurance companies will now offer you a discount on your premium if you install one in your car.

•    Vehicle Journey Recorders (VJRs).
A vehicle journey recorder can also be used by parents to monitor their children’s driving. It’s a bit boring, because you'll have to sit and analyse the footage, but if you want to, you can.

However, VJRs are much better as after the fact resources. What this means, is that they are good for proving liability once there has been an accident. They do not directly influence driver safety. Nonetheless, studies have shown that people drive more safely when they know the journey is being recorded.

•    Front and Rear Parking Sensors.
Parking sensors can improve safety dramatically. Mostly, it’s about protecting your car from the damaged caused by hitting things you might not have seen, such as bollards; or, it’s about preventing yourself from hitting other people’s cars when parallel parking, or parking in car parks.

However, one of the most important things that front and rear parking sensors protect against is from hitting toddlers and pets. It’s actually much more common than you might expect, but is something that can relatively easily be avoided with the use of parking aids.

A word of warning, though: parking aids are exactly that: an aid. You must always exercise caution, even when using aids. Do not take them for granted.

•    Collision-Avoidance System
These are a fantastic new technology to help enhance safety. They offer many features that can help you to stay safe while driving, especially when motorway driving. The best models offer you features, such as lane departure alarms, warnings of upcoming collisions, speed warnings, and distance from central reservation. The additional safety benefits of such a technology is immense. We would definitely recommend buying one.

If you would like to browse a collection of safety-technologies, please visit our website.

Various Parking Aids Explained

Nowadays parking spaces are hard to find and when you do spot one your car could be a tight fit as they are getting progressively smaller.

Although there are small cars about, most vehicles are now wider and longer and they have also become safer.  Because of safety strengthening pillars have been included in the body of the car and these limit visibility.

Because reversing aids are not really expensive if you fit the basic one, it is hardly surprising that they have become popular with safety conscious drivers.

There are several kinds of safeguards; you could have front and rear cameras fitted or automatic parking aids.  Of course, the latter two will be more expensive, but if you want to protect both your car and people outside, they have got to be worth it.

The cheapest form of parking aid is the ultrasonic one and if yours was factory fitted, it is very likely that you would have one of these.  They bounce sound waves of objects and you will hear a beeping sound in the car.

Depending on how far away the object is the beeping will tell you roughly how far and the sound will get increasingly urgent when you get very near.  The trouble with this system is that it can miss small objects.  It is also possible that if you go up a ramp the sensors are also activated.

Furthermore, to fit these to the bumpers requires you to drill holes to feed wires through to the inside of the car.

If you are a fitness fanatic and you often strap bicycles on the rear or the car, or tow a caravan you may want to have electro-magnetic parking sensors fitted.  They work by emitting an electro-magnetic field and anything that comes within it will trigger a response from the parking aids.

Caravans, tow bars and bicycle racks do not affect the efficiency of this type of sensor.  You would be wise to have them fitted after you have taken possession of your car as factory fitted systems are far more expensive.

What Are the Top Four Things to Look for When Buying Car Speakers?

Today, we're going to consider the most important features that you should look for when buying car speakers.

When The Beeping Does The Work

Car drivers habitually moan about the cost of their insurance and yet if they collectively took a few actions to help reduce accidents then these premiums could be reduced.

Just a couple of relatively inexpensive extras are known to reduce accidents or at least the cost to the insurer. Vehicle journey recorders would definitely help insurers settle claims far quicker in many cases.

It’s easier to apportion blame when there is filmed evidence. In Russia these cameras are compulsory and they’re always used from minor infringements to Coroners Courts.

Another cheap and effective way of avoiding minor bumps is to install reversing sensors. These can also be fitted to the front of the vehicle and help people park in tight spots.

Many new cars have them factory fitted but older cars may not have them. And again, these are cheap and easy to fit.

Nobody likes the idea of big brother but the fact is that if it was compulsory to have forward and rear fitted cameras along with parking sensors then insurance claims would be far quicker to settle.

Many people either fraudulently blame others for an accident or do so simply because their memory of the accident is blurred.

Parking sensors are more important these days than years before simply because the overall bodywork design of new cars means it’s hard to judge the front and back. Older cars had a squarer finish and a mascot that helped with judging length and space.

A dramatic change came about during the nineteen eighties when safety laws did away with the big chrome bumper and introduced the slope in the bonnet to help minimise injury in the event of a collision with pedestrians or cyclists.

Once you get used to that reassuring beep from the sensor that increases in frequency as you near the car in front or behind it becomes far easier to park.

But despite having them fitted the driver must still use their own common sense and if the beeps get quicker and there’s no obvious obstruction then getting out of the car and checking is best.

Budget And Quality Determines Auto Audio

There are so many manufacturers of car stereo systems it is very hard to the perfect one for your purpose.

To choose a system budget and best quality according to it is the biggest factor in choosing one system over the other.

If you are confused, the best thing to do is to get in touch with auto audio London whose technicians are helpful in explaining the merits of different systems.

A stereo system consists of a head unit or receiver, speakers, amplifiers and sub-woofers to get the most out of the system. Of course wiring is necessary to link them all together. The head unit is the piece of equipment that drives all the other components.

Normally you will find the two main speakers in the front of the car and there are often also two in the back. These speakers consist of two parts, one providing the high notes and the other the bass section.

If the head unit is important so are the amplifier power ratings. These will determine whether your audio unit makes the best of the sound it produces. If you are choosing a new unit for your car, you need to know the power rating. Without this information the power rating is meaningless.

A good power rating is 50watts x 4RMS. To have enough power is the factor that most people are looking for.

The biggest thing that you can do is to do your homework before you buy anything at all. Knowledge is power and you will less likely end up with the wrong system. The internet is a helpful tool to do the research.

The next step once you have a fair idea of what you need is to visit a showroom and ask to listen to the various systems on your list. After that it is plain sailing. You can buy the equipment on the internet where they are generally cheaper than in the shops.

If you need any fitting assistance, help is available. You may want to have the system fitted for you.

The Car of the Future: What Can We Expect to See in the Years to Come?

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to look no further into the future than a decade. It would be silly to go too far ahead, because that approaches the realms of science fiction, with teleportation, flying cars (we have these already, we call them planess), and light cycles. Instead, we’re going to look at the technologies that are coming to market within the next few years.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto

Spell check just flagged CarPlay as an error, but give it a few years, and it will be part of the dictionary that comes with most word processing software.

Both of these are the latest evolution for in-car entertainment from the two internet powerhouses: Apple and Google (Google bought the rights to Android back in 2005).

Bizarrely, in-car internet use has yet to take off properly, but within the next 5 years, it is going to explode into the market and become big business.

CarPlay and Auto will be the two operating systems going head to head for a slice of the market. Currently, they both offer similar functionality, but as soon as one gets ahead, it’s likely to dominate the market. Personally, because it’s less proprietary, the winner might be Android, but there’s still a lot of argument about this.

In terms of in-car entertainment, what can you expect from CarPlay and Auto?

• Maps – both have their own satnav technology. OK, it’s not entertainment, but it’s still cool
• Radio – digital, of course
• Media – audio and visual files. You can even feed to the back of the car and your fellow passengers. In fact, they can now control the main system from a tablet-style unit built into the back of the car. You can deactivate this feature, of course. Otherwise, you'll have the kids playing their rubbish music at 90+ decibels, which isn’t great for your concentration! Hopefully they’ll one day allow you to set parameters, so you can say up to which volume setting those in the back can listen, and to which files/radio stations they have access.
• Phone – speak to your friends and family whenever you want. We’d add work too, but that’s not entertaining!

They have plenty of other features too, such as traffic updates, voice activation, and menus, but that’s it for entertainment for now.

Newer cars will come with either option preinstalled. If you want one now, you have to get it installed. Most of you will have to use in car entertainment London, as it’s a relatively new technology, and few other places have audio shops that have the expertise needed to install the new units.

Lounge-Style Cars

Self-driving cars are nearly ready. They reckon that they’ll be a common feature on the roads from 2025. This is going to revolutionise driving, and especially the configuration of how we sit in the car. At present, we all sit facing forward, but in the future; experts hypothesise that we’ll be able to choose different configurations, and that a key favourite will be the front and back seats facing each other. In this way, it will be just like sitting in a lounge or in a bar. There might even be a table between us, for dinner and drinks. It might become a thing to go out for a dinner drive. We hope so!

If you would like to know more visit Incarmusic.