Hello, my name is Copăţ Lucian and I am going to speak you about the new technologies that make our cars safer and more reliable. If ten years ago a car was simply a way of transport, nowadays the cars had become so computerized and so complex that it is more and more complicated to understand the technologies that stand at the base of the car. It is my mission today to introduce you to some of those technologies and to explain them to you.
Let’s think at the car of the 50-ies: big, fuel consuming, slow. Add to that description the fact that when you were crossing a pit the entire car was trembling and shaking and you’ll have a complete image of those time cars. Nowadays the image will be more complete if we add ABS, airbags, conditioned air, tire pressure and temperature monitoring, night vision, alternative fuel and so on.
Nowadays the speed a car can run is a reason of proud for the constructors and all the efforts to develop the cars are made in the direction of increasing the maximum speed. But to run at high speeds, a car must be equipped with an efficient braking system. The old systems use clogs, which, by friction with the wheel disk, reduce the speed. This system is not efficient in cases that need urgent braking or if the road is slippery. The ABS (Anti-lock Braking Systems) controls the braking force and distributes it equally in time so the wheel in not braked suddenly, but gradually and so the wheel is not blocked. It was demonstrated that the time needed by a car equipped with ABS to stop is lower that the time the same car without ABS needs to stop.
The ABS system is efficient when the driver has the necessary time to brake, but in case of a collision it is useless. Because of the forces of inertia, the driver’s body is pushed to the front and even if he was wearing a seat belt, accidents may occur. The new technology introduces as a solution for this problem the airbags, which automatically inflate in case of a collision and intervenes between the parts of the car and the human body. There are frontal airbags, lateral airbags and airbags for the head, in case the car is hit from behind. The airbags are an efficient way to protect the vital organs of the human body, but in case of an extremely powerful collision it cannot action.