Heard of smartphones? How about a smart car?

If you’ve bought a car recently, you might be surprised to learn what’s going on ‘beneath the skin’! Over the past few years, we’ve adjusted to the expectation of MP3 capabilities in the stereo, iPhone integration, bluetooth handsfree for your mobile phone, integrated or third-party GPS navigation, and even Internet access directly from the screen of the onboard computer. A variety of cars have also started offering remote monitoring of your vehicle in case of theft, or to provide quick and accurate roadside assistance in the event of a breakdown.

Then, in recent years, we’ve started to see production vehicles come on the market with sophisticated ‘active cruise control’ which maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you as you’re cruising on the freeway, and self-parking vehicles which can size up a parallel parking spot and park the vehicle for you, while you keep your hands off the steering wheel and let the car do the manoeuvring.

But now the latest wave of sophisticated integration has arrived! Did you know that, around certain facilities such as the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and the Parkes Radio Telescope Dish, some radar cruise control systems are banned? The Mercedes Benz C-Class is smart enough, using it’s satellite navigation, to know where you are and automatically disable the active cruise control when you are within 3km of the Canberra facility, or within 10km of the Parkes Dish or the Narrabri Observatory.

Other cars will close your sunroof and/or windows if their rain sensors detect rain.

And, of course, most modern cars have a ‘black box’ much like a plane – it records a whole host of data such as accelerator pedal movements, braking, steering wheel position, and similar data which could assist a crash investigator to determine what you were doing with you car moments before you crashed.