Taken alone, the seatbelt is interesting. Taken together with other safety and technology enhancements that Ford’s been revealing, it’s clear that they’re gunning to be the new Volvo. High marks for safety in a reasonably priced car.

Recently, the company announced a crash avoidance system that uses radar to look behind and in front of you, alerting you about unseen traffic. Adaptive Cruise Control will automatically slow down your cruise control when a slower object is in front of you. MyKey, a personal data system that lets you manage information for each driver, enables you to set limits for your kids on driving speed, for example.

The new seatbelts will be available in Ford Explorers beginning next year; the other features will be part of the Taurus line (see blog on Taurus).
Watch my movie of the Ford crashless crash simulator and the new rear seatbelts.

Don’t they know that texting is just the tip of the iceberg? Your phone is about to distract you in so many new and exciting ways that you may never look at the road again. Take a look at the three apps I just saw at the DEMO conference this month. I think they’re out to get me.

Waze is a free app that allows you to build maps, update other drivers about traffic, police traps, and other potential gotchas. It’s available on Android, iPhone, RIM, and Windows. In all fairness to Waze, they get their dynamic traffic information in two ways. If you’re just driving around, your GPS is updating other drivers about where you are and whether you’re stuck in traffic. You can take a more active role as a traffic reporter by sending people messages about your commute. At that point Waze becomes a social-networking mobile driving application. Yikes. It’s a free app, but should be labeled “handle with care.”

TravelTrac, maker of MotoTrac, lets you build a website and update it constantly, keeping an in-depth, multimedia log of your vacation, your car pool, or any other road trip. Used wisely, MotoTrac provides the tools to build a travel site, open it to others to share, chart your route so friends and family can see you, add photos and real-time voice reports. The company’s demo reminds me of a multimedia twitterer on road trip. Great app, but take it from me, you’ve got to balance documenting your life with getting out of your car, right? There’re also versions of the product for sailors and for hikers.

Traffictalk is a voice-based traffic information sharing system. Your phone gets updates from other drivers in real time It’s meant to keep you talking, not texting. But the company demo showed that there are still plenty of buttons to press when transmitting and receiving. The new word for apps like this one and Waze are “crowdsourcing” — using the wisdom of the crowd to get your information. It may be new to us, but truckers have been doing it on CB radios forever.