What this will spawn: Youtube videos featuring people trying to keep this thing red as long as possible.

I'm waiting for the entire female populous to comment on the last sentence.

I'm waiting for the entire female populous to comment on the last sentence.

What, both of them that actually read Gizmodo?

Besides, the sentence was gender-neutral, despite the obvious insinuation :)

there's a reason stereotypes exist ...

Safe following distance is dependant on speed, and this doesn't appear to be able to sense speed. Judginf from the photos, traffic around here would be "dangerous" at best...I wonder what it reads when you're driving your Excursion two feet behind the car in front of you?

How else are you supposed to get the jerk that's driving too slow in your lane to move over to the right?

Now we need a device that measures BO and tells you how bad you need a shower.

Around here, if I leave the amount of room shown as "Safe", either I get tailed, or 6 other drivers will move into the space, immediately making it "Dangerous", so I just save them the trouble and follow too closely. If I'm going to be in a "Dangerous" situation, I'd rather put myself there than have others do it for me.

That device showed red a pretty good distance form the car in front of it... I'm betting I could do the same thing by putting a huge red sticker on my dash and drive in traffic everyday.

Their product: $1800

Huge Red Sticker: $Priceless

Unfortunately the Auto-nag option mentioned costs a whole lot more than $1800.

If you look closely you'll see that the device's screen reads "Careful with those ugly cars!"

if your in the "Safe" distance, expect everyone and their mother to cut in front of you, ultimately extending your short trip up to 30min to an hour

you do not need one of these if you drive a Hummer... Cos if the car inf ront stops you just drive clean through them.

the angry driver in me would much rather see this used as a targeting system for an optional rocket-launching attachment.

the geek in me has a "stay on target/ use the force" joke that no one really needs to hear.

seriously, this would be much more useful if the proximity sensor came with an attachment that directed the slower driver ahead to simply get out of the fucking way. it could be upgraded to direct people to turn their signals off, stop playing barney videos in the tv, or to hang up the damn phone already.

This is one of the absolute most illogical, impractical and idiotic devices I've ever seen created.

syzygy made a very valid point. I know that around where I drive, if I drive the "safe" distance depending on speed, I will never make it home since I'll have multiple cars moving into the enormous gap. Then I'll be forced to fslow down again as that same scenario repeats itself.

jwardell:
Yes, this device sucks, but I can't imagine it sucks bad enough to not be able to judge a safe distance based on speed. If that were true, this would be up there with solar-powered flashlights and underground windmills.

Actually its not a bad device. Many cars in countries without speed limits have these devices built in to keep drivers safe when traveling over 100 miles per hour. For example, all 3 and 6 series BMWs manufactured and sold in Germany have these devices built in below the speedomitor. This would be good for people who travel on unlimted speed highways that own cars that weren't manufactured with these safety devices....i mean honestly it can't be that annoying to keep people from buying it if so many people put up with the beeps and bloops of radar detectors or tomtom nagging them every 10 seconds.

Why bother maintaining a 3 second gap? You can almost guarantee some goobersmack will pull in front of you.

its not a hugely bad idea on one of those "learn to drive" cars.

i know when i had my permit, they used to have a neon that was programmed to act as if you were drunk, and as you drove it, altered and delayed the car's reactions, causing you to swerve about and hit things in the area.