Changing lanes on a busy interstate can be nerve-wracking. No matter how well you adjust your mirrors to eliminate any blind spot, there's always the possibility that some other driver may decide to enter the lane you were planning on merging into. Blind-spot monitoring systems can help this situation. These systems use radar and other sensors to determine if there is an obstacle to the left or right, immediately behind your vehicle, and flashing a warning light to alert you. Most of these systems, if such an obstacle is in these areas, will sound an audible warning should you turn on your turn signal—alerting you that a lane change is inadvisable.

Back-seat reminders

We've all heard the horrific stories of parents accidentally leaving their babies in the back seat of their car for hours on end. Automakers have caught on to this, and have developed systems aimed at eliminating these tragedies. If the car detects that a rear door had been opened either right before or right after starting the car, these systems will sound a chime and/or flash an alert on the dashboard once if the car stops and the driver puts the vehicle in park and turns off the engine.

Modern car driver and child rear-view mirror

Conversation mirror

Many minivans and crossover vehicles, built with families in mind, will offer a small convex mirror very near the interior rear-view mirror. This secondary mirror allows the driver or front-seat passenger to get a better view of rear seat occupants—a nice feature to monitor small children without the driver needing to see what's going on with the kids.

Honda's Odyssey minivan offers a new optional upgrade to the conversation mirror: the CabinWatch system uses cameras in the rear seat area to display, at the touch of a button, exactly what's going on in the rear seat.

Smartphone integration

It seems we use our phones for nearly everything these days. From the usual communication methods of speaking or texting to playing music or podcasts, to navigation. But using our phones while driving is incredibly dangerous, not to mention illegal in most places. Fortunately, the two most common smartphone systems—Apple and Android — both have developed applications to integrate our phones with our cars. Known as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, respectively, the apps allow you to connect your device and use certain features in a driving-friendly manner. No games or movies, of course—but both apps will let you use the navigation apps baked into your phone on the larger screen of your dashboard, as well as your favorite streaming music services, and many others.

Drowsiness detector

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimate that up to 6,000 fatal crashes every year might be caused by drowsy drivers. So far automotive engineers have failed to give us either the in-dash coffee brewers or in-car cold shower we might need to keep driving well past the limits of our natural attention levels. Those engineers have, however, developed various driver drowsiness detection systems that will alert the driver if the system believes they're driving while too tired. Most of these systems will monitor the steering input and compare your steering motions to how often various lane-keeping systems have to intervene in keeping you on the straight and narrow. If the car determines that you might be exhausted, chimes may sound and alerts will display on the dashboard to suggest taking a break from the road. Appropriately, many of these systems will display a coffee cup pictogram on the dash.

Adaptive cruise control

Traditional cruise control was great for driving on an open highway because you could set a speed and let your right foot relax for a while. When you encounter another car on the road, however, invariably they're going just a hair slower causing you to cancel the cruise control, adjust your speed to match or accelerate to pass.

Modern adaptive cruise control takes advantage of the myriad sensors on many new cars, scanning the road ahead to adapt your car's speed to that of the car ahead. With a control on the steering wheel, you select a target speed, and the car will maintain it—or slow down to stay a safe distance from the car in front. Many such systems will work well even in stop-and-go traffic, slowing you down to a complete stop if the traffic ahead warrants.

Tire pressure monitoring systems

After a spate of highly-publicized crashes that were traced back to underinflated tires, federal legislation was phased in as of 2007 requiring all passenger vehicles to be equipped with a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS). The TPMS alerts the driver with a warning light (typically a pictogram of an exclamation point within the outline of a tire) that lets the driver know that a tire has lost pressure. Some more modern systems will actually display the actual pressure number on the dashboard, while older systems will still require you to check each tire's pressure manually. It's one of many car maintenance basics everyone should know.