Monitoring blind in this throttle response knows when you're towing

In the future, like automotive technology, sensors will be everywhere. The bridges will know when you pass under it, the side lanes will be equipped with 5G sensors that interact with your car and know when you are sailing, and behind you you will be able to detect your bumper even from afar.

This type of activity sensor is not possible today, mainly because the infrastructure itself is not online in most cities (except for places like Las Vegas), or the sensors themselves are too expensive.

However, the converted bogie frame pickup – namely the 2019 Ram 1500 I tested for a week – which has a base price of $31,895 (around £26,000, AU$18,000) – comes equipped with a unique blind spot monitoring system that provides clues to how things are this will work in the future.

Hidden dangers

Blind spot monitoring is not a new invention and has been around for a while. I've tested cars up until 2009 that use sensors to tell if someone in the adjacent lane is out. This is called blind spot monitoring because the car you are partially hiding behind the wheel of the car next to you. It's so common that I'm surprised when a car isn't available.

In RAM 1500, it works a little differently. If you're towing a trailer or a yacht, the sensors can scan all the way behind you and spot an oncoming vehicle in the adjacent lane. (By the way, this feature itself has a long name, it's called blind spot monitoring with rear path cross and trailer recognition.)

I really like how it works because you don't have to do anything. The sensors automatically detect a trailer or boat connected to it and scan further behind you.

In my tests, the blind controls worked flawlessly. In a truck, this is useful because you can't always see behind or in the next lane. I have checked other trucks and I have never seen an option to scan other than the truck itself. Unless you're towing a motorhome camper that blocks your field of vision so that you can't see the next lane, advanced sensors help even more.

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Communicating from the road

In the future, sensors will know much more than whether you have a yacht in tow and that there is an Audi A5 crawling next to you. Audi will also report its location and you will see a warning if you are trying to change lanes. And let's say you're approaching an area where there's a divider on the road, which seems to have happened quite a bit. The pavement itself will communicate with your truck and let you know to avoid that part of the road.

With autonomous cars, all this will happen in real time and the vehicles will be aware of each other, the roadway, and any obstacles on the way. We're closer to that than you think - in Las Vegas, for example, brake lights can interact with the car and warn you of a red light. I've tested this on a standalone car and once you experience it, it makes perfect sense and it's hard to imagine driving without these connections.

Right now I like 1500 sensors in RAM. This is a stopgap for current driving technology that will help pave the way for more sensors to help us drive safer.

On road This is TechRadar's regular look at futuristic engineering in the hottest cars. John Brandon, a journalist who has been writing about cars for 12 years, puts a new car and cutting edge technology through the paces every week. One goal: to find out what new technologies will lead us to fully self-driving cars.

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