Seat Leon Cristobal concept is the safest car ever
The car maker unveiled two new vehicles on its home ground in Barcelona with the aim of working towards safer and more connected mobility.
Seat has unveiled the safest car it’s ever produced – equipped with a breathalyser that will prevent you from driving it if you give a positive reading.
The concept car is called the Leon Cristobal, after the patron saint of drivers, and features other safety features such as ‘guardian angel mode’, a driver coach, parental controls and rear-view mirror that uses a rear camera to improve visibility.
With 80 per cent of all traffic accidents caused by distraction, drowsiness, alcohol or speeding, the car maker has attempted to counteract them all with these additions.
Get into the Cristobal and without all passengers fastening their seatbelt the car won’t start. Although the breathalyser is an off-the-shelf item, it’s integrated with the car’s infotainment system. When you start the car it will instruct you to let the breathalyser warm up, to blow into it and then it analyses the sample to give you a reading. Depending on the limit that’s set, the car will or won’t let you drive away.
A lot of these additions are built around the idea of car sharing and how much you trust the people you’re lending your cars to.
Project manager for Cristobal Stefan Ilijevic explained: “It’s especially interesting when you leave your car with your children. Say you’ve got an 18-year-old son and you don’t know how he’s going to behave with the car, you can activate the breathalyser. Every time he starts the car he has to do the alcohol test.”
Seat showed off its latest connected car technology at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona yesterday, where the Leon Cristobal took centre stage alongside the e-Mii – an electric version of Seat’s city car. For now only 10 e-Miis have been made and all are fitted with the car-sharing app.
With this, drivers can find the car they want to drive and unlock it all using a smartphone by receiving a digital key for the car.
This is where the benefits of those safety features seen on the Cristobal really shine. Seat has designed them with car sharing in mind, and potentially sharing your car with someone you don’t know or don’t completely trust.
The guardian angel mode is simply a button on the steering wheel that activates all 15 safety modes on the car, but again this can be set when you lend your car out. With eye tracking, the car can also tell when you’re dropping off to sleep or are distracted and can offer prompts to prevent this.
By Rebecca Chaplin
