Gearfuse

I’m not driving with you anymore. No way. I’ve had enough bruises to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. Nope, I’d like you to meet AIDA, short for Affective Intelligent Driving Assistant. Basically this little guy will take my place, and hopefully take my place as your punching bag. I’m tired of dressing as a robot anyway.

AIDA uses sensors both inside and outside of the car to create “a platform comprising of a personal robot and an intelligent navigation system that aims to bring an innovative driving experience.” So yeah… basically a robotic backseat driver. Focusing less on the waypoints and more on driver behavior, AIDA gets to know you and your car on a more personal level than some might be comfortable. Check out the demo vid after the jump.

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Whether your spying on your kids or just like keeping a recent record of where you’ve been, the Driving Reporter does the job. Tracking all activity for the most recent 100 hours, the Driver Reporter is a 16-channel GPS device that keeps tabs on all of your driving data, including where you’ve been and how long you were there.

If you’ve just broken up with your super-stalkerish geeky boyfriend, I’d definitely be checking the car for any new doodads.

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If you’ve got some extra cash burning a hole in your pocket and you’re a fan of fast, luxurious cars, may I recommend checking out the new Mercedes Benz AMG Driving Academy that’s been set up in Lime Rock, Connecticut and Palm Beach, Florida. For a little under two grand, you can spend a day driving AMG-tuned (sorry, no BRABUS) Mercedes models like the C63, SLK55, SL63, CLK 63 Black Series and the new E63 AMG. People who want the full experience can shell out more cash for a two day program that will have you doing burnouts and spinning across the track all day long. Anyone have $2000 I can borrow?

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Occifer, Oficer. I’m surry about this misucnderstandingish thing.

Look, I’ll be honesth with you. Really, I want to. Really.

I was at’d thees party, right? Lotsta chicks. Everything goin’ well. I had, maybe, MAYBE, like six vodka tonics. I swear. OK, maybe seven but definly not moor than seven. UGH MY HEAD.

Look, Occifer. I got this iBreath thingie for my iFone. See, you just shlap it on there and blow in and ya getcher DUI breath thing readout I-forget-how-it-works-exactly. See? I blew a .24, which is a really high score, meaning I win! Right? Right?

Sir! Let go ofth me! I’m nort dorunk! I spent $80 on this fucking thing! CALL MY WIFE!!!

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Today is your lucky day, dear reader. We have another contest on our hands and this time, there’s a catch. We have two wireless mice up for review from Road Mice, a Four Door Media company. One is a black Corvette and the other is the 2009 Camaro. Pretty rad.

Rather than review a mouse myself, I’m enlisting you to review it. Leave a comment with a valid name, e-mail address and a good reason why you want to review one of these. Two people will be chosen at random to receive the mice. You write a three paragraph (or more) review and send it to us and you get to keep the mice. Think of it as “citizen journalism” or “unpaid writing,” depending on how cynical you are.

UPDATED: Contest ends on December 31st, 2008. Start your engines! More details about the mice after the jump.

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Traffic lights are an annoying but needed accessory to our daily life. When I used to drive, I’d get incredibly irritated with those new traffic lights that don’t show you what color it is until the last possible second. Now Art Lebedev is hoping to switch things up with these colorful, LED-powered square traffic lights. While red, green and yellow lights will be familiar, the shape of them gives them a new look that most drivers would welcome in a heartbeat. Let’s see if Audi can detect these.

What about you? Would you like to see some new traffic lights on your street corner that resemble these?

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When driving in New Jersey, you’ll notice one thing: no driver follows the cellphone law. I try to, but I usually find fiddling with a headset and a phone much more distracting than operating just the phone itself. New Jersey is not the garden state, it’s the motor state. It has more drivers than any other state and many of them are just plain bad at commuting. The headset law only makes it worse.

It’s retarded laws like this that make a Bluetooth steering wheel a must have. It works just like a Bluetooth headset, it’s compatible with Bluetooth phones and allows you to receive or reject calls, redial the last number and use speed dial right from your steering wheel. Seriously though, you’re still going to have to keep your eyes on the road. Quick glances, people; that’s the trick.

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Ford has unveiled its new take on automobile dashboards with what it’s calling the SmartGauge. The LCD gauge will debut in Fords 2010 line of hybrids, the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrid. The gauge uses an all-digital screen with lively animations to prompt drivers on good driving habits by displaying a heavily stylized greenery for good behavior. It’s almost as bad as the teddy bear backseat driver.

The gauges are fully customizable, able to display whatever real time data the driver wishes to see. From what I’ve seen in the videos, it looks to be one of the most impressive dashboards ever put in an automobile. It also appears to be way too distracting for drivers, most of which have a bad enough attention span as it is.

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There sure is a lot of car-related news today. Anyways, despite the automotive glut this story was too cool to pass up. Nissan’s futuristic Pivo 2, a “robot assisted” car that lets you drive backwards and even sideways will hit the road in Portugal in 2011. Sideways driving ability and robotic car controls aren’t the only futuristic feature on the Pivo 2, the cars are also equipped with “green” electric engines. Portugese Prime Minister Jose Socrates announced on Wednesday that his country will begin building a national network of electric car charging centers so that Nissan and Renault can start selling the Pivo 2 there in two and-a-half years. It becomes available worldwide in 2012.

The Pivo 2 has four engines, pivoting wheels, and a rotating cabin so you can face front while driving in multiple directions. This unique design helps people to avoid tight parallel parking jobs forever.

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Not everyone wants to solve their parking problems by sacrificing their dignity and squeezing into one of those tiny urban cruiser cars. Luckily for San Francisco residents, the city is stepping in to try and help them avoid the parking crunch. As part of a $95.5 million program called SFPark, 6,000 of San Francisco’s 24,000 metered parking spaces are being outfitted with sensors that will allow drivers to spot open parking spaces by checking maps on their cell phones or by looking at displays on street signs.

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