We take out car insurance to avoid heavy costs in an accident. Hopefully the accident won’t have consequences that outweigh economic misery. Toyota are developing future safety technology to minimise the effects of an accident and in some cases attempt to prevent them altogether. The implications of future safe technology are manifold. On the one had the developments will reduce fatalities and on the other they could vastly reduce car insurance.

Toyota is developing a variety of technologies that can do things from monitoring your health to collision avoidance. Where the human response system may struggle to react or adapt, the computerised response system can. Toyota has made the logical step of utilising the speed of technological processing and adapting it for the use of safety technology.
Some pre crash technology is already fitted to some Toyotas. This works in terms of scanning the road for potential obstacles and if a potential collision is detected, seat belts tighten and air bags ready themselves to deploy.

Some cars already have automatic breaking when an imminent collision is detected. Toyota has added a feature that evaluates other obstacles in the road and duly makes the car steer around any potential collision. This can only serve to reduce serious collisions and in turn may have a positive effect on car insurance prices due to lower incidences of injury claims.

An ageing population has the inevitable side effect of ageing road users. Although older drivers are generally more experienced they can suffer from ailments such as blackouts or weak hearts. Toyota are developing technology to monitor the drivers health, heart beat, tiredness which could make the roads safer infirm motorists and further reduce premiums on the car insurance of older drivers.

Future safe technology includes an adoptive light beam that adjusts the angle of your headlights with other road users in mind. Most impressively is the pop up bonnet which automatically raises the bonnet clear of hard engine components in the event of a collision. This could revolutionise pedestrian safety and again decrease car insurance prices.

Are you 15 years old or less? Do you like cars? Are you imaginative? Can you draw or paint? If the answer to all of these questions is ‘yes’ then why not consider entering the Toyota annual dream car art contest?

The Toyota annual dream car art contest is now in its sixth year and it has some fantastic prizes including all-expenses paid trip to Japan for the winner and two of his or her family members.
You will need to imagine and draw your ultimate car of the future, and that car can be anything you like. It could be a supersonic car, a flying car, a racing car, a super-luxury car, a car that runs off grass, whatever you might be able to dream up.

You can use what ever form of drawing or painting you wish, crayons, pencils, water colours, poster-paints, whatever you like. All entries need to have been submitted by the deadline which is 31 January 2012 so there is lots of time left for you to create your masterpiece.

Don’t worry about having to compete with older children. The competition entries will be judged in three categories: under 10 years old; 10-12 years old; and 13-15 years old.
Winners will be selected from every country that is represented in the competition (there are 80 of them) and then the judging panel will pick the overall winner from those. The National winners will be revealed in February 2012 and the global winner will be announced in June 2012.

The award ceremony will be held in Japan in August 2012. There awards are: gold award; silver award; bronze award; finalist award (for every national finalist); and a special award. The winner of the special award will be chosen personally by Akio Toyoda who is the president of Toyota.
Last year there were 120,000 entries from 50 countries.

A concept that is quite beneficial to remember when deciding whether to purchase a brand-new car or a second-hand car is this: a used car was previously a new car before it was driven out of the showroom. It may well seem like stating the obvious, but it’s true, and nowadays, during times of economic uncertainty, cars depreciate far quicker, and the price drops rapidly, pretty much as soon as it leaves the car-lot. After around two years, a new car is said to have lost 60% of its original value. So, by meticulously searching around on websites such as www.motors.co.uk, and doing real research, it’s not uncommon to find a near new vehicle for almost half it’s original price. One of the main reasons that put people off heading down to their nearest showroom and buying a new car is all the headaches that come attached. Firstly, the pushy car-dealers that put pressure on individuals to actually buy a vehicle, and secondly, all the paperwork and contracts.

However, when checking out local used cars for sale, these headaches are suddenly removed. After deciding on a specific car online, individuals can then contact the seller, and then arrange for a viewing. Once at the viewing, the potential buyer can then ask any questions about the vehicles history, and perhaps take it for a test drive. The headache of the price is also less of an issue when buying a used vehicle. Because showroom dealers are less likely to come down on a price, bartering is essentially out of the question, however, when buying used motors, the price is quite negotiable, and can often drop quite drastically from the original sum. Often, the seller is in need of a quick sale, perhaps to fund a newer car, therefore getting a few hundred pounds off the asking price is not uncommon.