“WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET IN THE BACK!” In Car Accessories for Keeping Kids Quiet

As a family, we used to go on mammoth car journeys. Every year, we’d drive from the Midlands, in the UK, to the south of France. That was 11 hours in the car, each way. As you can imagine, our parents pulled their hair out the whole time. Sometimes, it was like a game of musical chairs; every hour or two, the driver (either mum or dad) would pull over, swap places and one of them would swap places with one of us kids too, so that we all rotated (expect the kids never got to drive, which was thoroughly boo at the time, but understandable). The reason for the incessant rotation was the grizzly arguments that happened every few hours.

Well, fortunately for today’s parents and kids, it’s not like this anymore. Today, there are loads of in-car entertainment options that can help keep the kids quiet the whole time. No more will families hear the familiar chant of ‘will you please be quiet!’ (-the polite version, we all know it’s not really like that) and ‘are we nearly there yet?’ (Er, no, we left two hours ago and it’s a 12-hour drive!).

Here, we’re going to take a look at some of the popular choices of in-car entertainment for 21stcenturyglobetrotters…and their kids.

In-Car DVD System
Any car audio shop worth their salt will have DVD systems for sale. These aren’t simple, single screen affairs. The top-of-the-range systems allow you to have DVDs in all of the headrests (or that come down from the ceiling) and in the dashboard in front of the front passenger (no DVDs for the driver, but with driverless cars, that’s never going to happen, because they’ll be no driver!). Thesesystems allow plenty of different configurations. For example, everyone can watch the whole film and the audio comes out of the car’s main audio system, or, each person can watch a different DVD and use headphones to listen to theirs; and with Bluetooth, they don’t even need wired headphones. It’s not just better than the olden days, it’s orders of magnitude better.

In-Car Audio System
A car audio shop will have a fantastic range of stereos and speakers, and you can make your car an incredible audio experience. There’s something about the acoustics in a car that gives music a unique feel – it’s probably something to do with the size of the space. anyway, if you love audio, there are some fantastic options that will allow you to pick up all of the subtleties of your music at volumes that would be totally out of order at home (seriously guys, think of your neighbours, some of you are insufferable!).

                            

Detailed Satnav
This doesn’t sound too fun, but for the driver it can provide some entertainment (in the sense that it’s something different to do than the monotony of driving). In-car dashboard controls and satnavs have some incredible technology. You can do many things nowadays, such as spotting those pesky mobile speed cameras – yep, some satnavs update this in real time.