seats

Ford will make its new inflatable seat belt an option on the Flex and Lincoln vehicles starting next summer.

The high-tech pretensioner contains an airbag that deploys in the event of an accident and expands to cover five times more of the occupant's torso than a traditional belt. By diffusing crash pressure over a larger area, the new belt helps reduce the risk of injury to backseat passengers.

"This advanced restraint system is designed to help reduce head, neck, and chest injuries for rear-seat passengers, often children, and older passengers who can be more vulnerable to such injuries," said Sue Cischke, Ford group vice president of Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering. … Read more

Welcome to CNET Roadside Assistance, the show were the Car Tech guys take some time to respond to your queries and highlight your comments. This week we look at bench seats, downshifting, and how E85 is no good.

• LOLcars (photos)

Have you often looked out the window of a plane and wished you could find out about what you're seeing down below? Thanks to a new service that went into alpha testing today, you could soon do just that.

Known as MondoWindow, the service aims to let anyone onboard a Wi-Fi-enabled plane get real-time information about the places they're flying over. And as the service gets more sophisticated, it will likely add all kinds of additional features like audio programming, videos, and games, all related specifically to the places you can see five miles below you.

MondoWindow comes … Read more

In this episode, Toyota gets exonerated, Hummer owners pretend their cars are electric, and do you wear your seatbelts?

• Toyota electronics not at fault for unintended acceleration

• Hummer owner claims $7,500 EV tax credit

• PNDs get into the backup camera business

• Thumping systems SAFE FOR NOW in Hawaii...

• Maybe a jump ball story: Rear seat belts: Do you wear them? How about seat belts in a cab?

LAS VEGAS--Audiovox knows that rear-seat DVD player sales are slumping, and its previous endeavors with the FLO TV digital video service ended in failure, so the electronics manufacturer is looking to reinvent headrest-based mobile entertainment in a very interesting way. It's debuting a prototype Android-powered rear-seat entertainment system.

The system combines a rear-seat DVD player and an Android tablet into one mobile hub. Users can connect the system to the Internet to stream YouTube videos, update their Facebook pages, and access other online content from the backseat. The prototype features a full Android 2.1 Eclair experience--there's even … Read more

The Lexus LFA, which is available this month, will feature new inflatable seat belt technology.

The Takata "Airbelt," or SRS Seat Belt Airbag, is built into the webbing of the seat belt. It's designed to protect drivers and front-seat passengers in front- or side-impact collisions.

From the looks of it, and a description of how it works, the airbag will fill up with air on impact. It looks strikingly similar to the inflatable rear seat belts revealed last summer from Ford for the 2011 Ford Explorer.

The belt expands directly to spread the shock-load over a wider … Read more

We're all used to the pedestrian chirps at a traffic light, the click-click of a turn signal or even the beep-beep of a seat-belt alert, but engineers at Ford are taking further steps to understand what sounds folks will actually respond to without being annoyed.

Sound engineers at Ford use scientific theory, listening clinics and on-road simulations to find the sounds that prove most effective for driver alerts.

"Ford engineers spend a tremendous amount of time finding just the right sound for just the right situation to help customers react to potential dangers," said Paul Mascarenas, Ford … Read more

Mercedes beats Ford to Pandora streaming, OnStar wants to make its service free (sort of), a smart car seat for kids, and we take a run in the 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT8.

• Mercedes in the hunt for in-car Pandora streaming

• Microsoft updates automotive version of Windows

• Smart car seat: Can't you just do this yourself?

• Electronically darkening glass roof coming to the Mercedes SLK

• CNET drives the 2010 Challenger SRT8

• CNET LOL cars