Exiting a car parked streetside is a danger that should be avoidable but hasn’t been until now. Sat in the back, it can be hard to spot that car looming a bit too close as you open the door right in its path… crunch.
Enter Audi Exit Warning, a canny system that uses existing onboard technology to warn if you’re about to open your car door, and yourself, into the path of a fast-approaching vehicle.
It’s ingeniously simple. It uses the standard ultrasonic rear sensors, more commonly used as reverse parking guides (and more recently facilitating cross-traffic monitoring too), to detect oncoming cars. They are initiated to do this whenever you stop, and will monitor traffic for up to three minutes after you switch the car off.
Go to exit when there’s a car approaching? Then the warning system kicks in: a vivid red strip of LEDs illuminates around the doorhandle to alert you of the danger. You may not have looked behind, but the car has, and has spotted the HGV driving toward the path into which you’d step.
The video below shows how it works.
The only stumble is that it’s not cheap. It comes as part of the Audi Parking Assistance Pack Advanced: a £1,675 set of gadgets that help in traffic, when changing lane and when reversing, as well as when getting out the car.
It includes:
Parking Assist
360-degree cameras
Audi Side Assist
Cross Traffic Assist Rear
Audi Pre-Sense Basic
Audi Pre-Sense Rear
A price worth paying? If you have a family and park on the street, it’s certainly worth considering. Even if you don’t think it’s worthwhile, minicab drivers in a few years almost certainly will…