8. Chin Alarm
The Chin Alarm is perhaps one of the more ridiculous car innovations on the list. This was designed as a fail safe for keeping people awake when they were driving. The idea was that a driver who was concerned about falling asleep at the wheel would attach a bell of some sort to their chin and then it would ring loudly if their chin dropped. This idea was expanded upon in 1936 with a small metal gong that the driver would hang from his shirt collar. If the driver’s chin dropped in the slightest the gong would loudly ring and wake the driver up. From the pictures it looks more like a prank hand buzzer, which might actually have been even more effective at waking up a dozing driver.
Fatigued drivers have been around since the early days of cars and they have not gone away. However, since many people were not too eager to strap a bell to their chin, there have been modern improvements to safeguards against driver dozing. Today Ford offers a camera mounted on the rear-view mirror that detects lane markings on the road and predicts where the car should drive. If the driver deviates from the camera’s prediction an alarm sounds and a warning is displayed on the dash alerting the driver to take a break (with the tempting image of a coffee cup). Mercedes-Benz has their own tired driver system in which the car gathers information about driver behavior within the first few minutes of any drive. After that if the driver deviates from the driver profile that was created an alert sounds and once again a friendly coffee cup is displayed. These modern-day “chin alarms” are at least much more comfortable than having a gong tied around your neck and they are even more effective.