Williams Buick GMC: Summer Reminder: Watch Out for Hot Cars and Kids

Summer is officially here, and many families are taking advantage of the warm weather for a vacation. In fact, a recent study from TripAdvisor stated that three in four summer travelers said they would be taking a trip by car, up from 70% last summer.

Whether it’s a trip down the road to the local ice cream shop, or a cross country road trip, remember to take extra care this summer and make sure kids are safe and comfortable in the car.

The General Motors Foundation and Safe Kids Worldwide are partnering to spread awareness of the dangers of heat stroke.  According to Safe Kids Worldwide, a global organization with a mission of preventing unintentional childhood injury, roughly 38 children in the United States die each year from being trapped in a hot car. Since children’s bodies heat up three to five times faster than adults, they are at greater risk for hyperthermia—also known as heat stroke.

“In May of 2013, we recorded seven deaths from heat stroke in vehicles,” said Kate Carr of Safe Kids in a recent podcast. “And that’s heartbreaking; it’s a tragedy and something that we can avoid.” This year, there have already been 15 heatstroke related deaths reported in the United States.

Cars can heat up to dangerous levels in as little as a few minutes, and it doesn’t take a temperature of 90 degrees for this to happen—a car can reach well above 110 degrees on a nice cool day of 60 or 70 degrees.

In order to prevent heatstroke deaths, Safe Kids has developed some key tips that can be easily remembered using the acronym A.C.T.

A: Avoid heatstroke related injury and death by never leaving a child alone in a car—not even for a minute. Make sure the car is locked and the keys are out of reach to children, and teach children that a vehicle is not a play area.

C: Create reminders by putting an important item in the back seat of the car— such as a purse, briefcase or cell phone.

T: Take action. Call 9-11 if a child is left alone in a car.

“We want to make sure everyone has a safe and enjoyable summer,” said James Bell, head of consumer affairs for General Motors. “By spreading the word and making a personal commitment to never leave your child alone in the car, we can prevent these tragedies from happening.”

Safe Kids and the General Motors Foundation are also partnering with 600 coalitions across the United States—including police and fire departments, healthcare workers, and hospitals to spread the word and help educate families on the dangers of leaving a child alone in the car.

Summer vacation should be fun and relaxing! With the right planning and attention to safety, this summer will be sure to provide unforgettable memories for the whole family.

For more information, visit Safe Kids Worldwide (http://www.safekids.org/heatstroke)

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Learn to Drive Manual by Hacking Xbox Controller

Original Source: Jalopnik.com

It's no secret that shifting your own gears improves your quality of life, because of science or something. 

A young engineer at Ford has come up with a very clever hack of an Xbox controller and Ford's open source software to make a shift knob that helps you learn how to drive stick. It’s also a peek into the future of car mods.

Microsoft® Xbox 360™ Controller

What the engineer, Zac Nelson, has done is to essentially create a smart shift knob. What does it do, exactly? It tells you when to shift gears by vibrating. But there's so much more to it than that! So much more!

The knob, which is a custom, 3D-printed piece, talks to the car’s computer via OpenXC, the open-source application programming interface (API) Ford developed and proposed as an open standard for car communication.

The knob uses an Arduino microcontroller to handle the data from the car (engine RPM, throttle position) and control the vibration motor from the XBox controller, and a 7-segment LED to visually show the gear position. There's also a full-RGB-color LED in there just for giggles, it seems.

An Android tablet is used to configure the shift knob for both the particular car’s characteristics, or the goals of the shifting, say speed or economy. The tablet is plugged into the knob via a miniUSB port, and parameters of when the vibration happens can be set, so you can have it hold to redline for maximum acceleration, or set a much lower number for better fuel economy.

The knob has been in cars ranging from a Focus to a Shelby GT500.

While this is a very clever little car hack just on its own, it’s an even better basic tutorial of what is becoming possible for car hackers and modifiers with a few fundamental tools. One of the most interesting things about the hack is the OpenXC standard. It’s still relatively new and not yet close to becoming an open standard across manufacturers, but it’s a good start.

At the moment it provides read-only information, but the set of data it can provide is quite useful for many things. Here’s the list of supported data streams, as of January 2012:

• AcceleratorPedalPosition
• BrakePedalStatus
• EngineSpeed
• FineOdometer - a persistent odometer recording)
• FuelConsumed - fuel consumed since the vehicle was started)
• FuelLevel - current level of fuel in the gas tank.
• HeadlampStatus - are headlamps are off or on.
• HighBeamStatus
• IgnitionStatus
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Odometer
• ParkingBrakeStatus - is the parking brake is engaged or not.
• SteeringWheelAngle
• TorqueAtTransmission - the actual current torque in the transmission.
• TransmissionGearPosition - the actual current gear of the transmission.
• TurnSignalStatus
• VehicleButtonEvent A ButtonEvent represents a button press, release or hold on the vehicle HMI.
• VehicleDoorStatus - is a door ajar?
• VehicleSpeed - the current forward speed of the vehicle.
• WindshieldWiperStatus

That’s all extremely handy data for a driver, and is plenty to make, say, an entirely custom instrument cluster, if you wanted. Want to replace your warning lights with a row of tiny mechanical semaphore flags? You could do it with the data given here. Want to make your car honk when a certain latitude and longitude are reached? It’s doable.

This shift knob project also is a great example of how useful common programmable microcontrollers like the Arduino are for car hacking. Just downloading and reading the code (linked here) is a huge help for learning how to read data from the car, and then act upon it.

With the era of the manual transmission quickly dying, car enthusiasts and automakers
could welcome the younger generation re-interest in manual transmission driving.

An Arduino has a number of pins that can be connected to various other inputs or outputs. You can use it to read the data from the car, evaluate it, and based on parameters you’ve programmed in, act upon it in many ways.

Here, the Arduino is reading RPMs, and based on the number set by the UI on the tablet, triggers the XBox vibration motor accordingly. That’s at its most basic, and setting the LED numerical display is gravy.

This project could be simplified a bit by eliminating the display and fancy custom 3D printed shift knob, and hard-coding in the shift points to the Arduino (you could always connect the Arduino to your laptop to change them) if you knew how to drive stick, but wanted a way to make sure you always hit the right RPM shift points when you track your car or something. You could modify an existing shift knob for the housing, and while it wouldn’t look as cool as the 3D printed one, it’d work.

This little project is a great tutorial for anyone looking to get started in modern car hacking. This is how hot-rodding in the future will be happening, and it’s worth getting familiar with the tools if you’re not already.

Hopefully, these open standards to get data into and out of your car will soon become industry-wide open standards. There’s lots of potential fun to be had.

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Williams Buick GMC is your official headquarters for premium Buick and GMC vehicles.

Don't miss this fantastic opportunity to order your Buick or GMC through Williams Buick GMC and receive more color and option choices!

Order now for your exclusive money saving offer at Williams Buck GMC!

http://www.williamsbuickgmc.com is your one stop shop for hassle free new and certified pre-owned car shopping.

Find out about the latest Buick and GMC, as well as schedule test drives, and request more information about any model!