Holiday Gifts for Data-Oriented Drivers — What's Under Your Tree? ​

author: Anthony   

What might your friends and family be secretly wishing for this Holiday Season in terms of data-related automobile technology? With so many new and exciting trends hitting the marketplace, it's hard to know exactly what would make the perfect gift for your loved ones.

One recent article listed a plethora of potential gifts for tech-savvy consumers. It's of course hard to narrow down what you should consider purchasing, but these seem to be some pretty neat and functional items.

They include the following:

The Pearl RearVision backup camera

"This is a backup camera with no messy installation required – it's a Wi-Fi enabled license plate cover that talks to your smartphone. The team behind it are ex-Apple, so the hardware engineering is on point, and it's getting regular updates to make it better – like a parking lines overlay for backing safely into spots."

Waylens Horizon driving camera

"Dashcams are a dime a dozen, but the Waylens Horizon is more like a GoPro for your car. It's best if you actually have cause to drive fast, or over off-road terrain, but it's still very cool in general for capturing footage out the front of your vehicle."

Imagine if you were able to record important incidents that you might come across while driving. What about that meteor that was filmed by various dashcams as it streaked across the Russian sky?

Mountek nGroove CD slot mount for smartphones

"Older cars have CD slots but no Bluetooth because the world was so backwards even just five years ago. The Mountek nGroove is a great way to put your smartphone in GPS mode on cars with outdated infotainment systems. And if you've got Android, this is the perfect partner to the Android Auto app for distraction-free in-car navigation and tunes."

Techradar.com offers some additional gift ideas:

Intelligent sat nav
"If you have a sat nav already you will have almost certainly have taken a wrong turn while using it. If you're in a car, it's easy to get back on your intended path, but for truckers, van drivers and cars with trailers, it can be disastrous. Unless you use thisclever new system from Snooper which can warn of low bridges and narrow roads."

Personal breathalyser
"If you overdo it on the Christmas sauce you might well still be over the drink-drive limit the next day. But fear not, because one blow intothis pocket-sized breathalyser from AlcoSense will tell you if you are fit to drive or need to go back to bed."

Car camera
"If you fancy creating your very own Top Gear, you'll want one of these. The Go Pro camera fits anywhere on your car so you can record your action-packed moments."

These highly personalized items depend on one's tastes. That much is certain. It can be fairly stated that these gifts might also keep your loved ones safer while driving. They probably will also help keep other drivers on the road safe as well. Certainly they'll help make your holidays more cheerful and a bit warmer. These gifts will also remain "the gifts that keep on giving" all year round.

Anthony

Anthony C. LoBaido is a journalist, ghostwriter and photographer. He has worked in 53 nations around the world – from Laos to Lebanon, from Belize to Botswana and from Nepal to Namibia. He also published a book on the Kurds. Some of LoBaido’s favorite stories include attending the British Army’s jungle warfare training in Central America, retracing Lawrence of Arabia’s World War I trek through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, investigating the blood diamonds of Sierra Leone as popularized in the Leonardo DiCaprio film by the same name, meeting “CNN hero” Aki Ra at one of his landmine digs in northern Cambodia, working with Time Magazine’s “Hero of Asia” Lek Chailert on her crusade to assist injured and abused elephants in Southeast Asia, rescuing HIV/Aids throw-away babies in the garbage dumps of Cape Town, South Africa, as well as visiting a leper colony in Myanmar. LoBaido’s articles have been cited by Ivy League universities such as Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. As a photographer, LoBaido made National Geographic in 2014.