Ok, bad title, I apologize.

I’m sure everyone’s had one of those days/nights where you park your car in a gargantuan parking lot and end up spending twenty minutes finding your car. While the problem has been partially solved by remote key fobs that allow one to roam around the parking lot aimlessly trying to unlock the car, car companies have been limiting the range as a security issue (it’s a lot easier now for anyone who steals your keys to steal your car too). With many manufactures adopting some form of On-star-like services, here’s an idea:

If you really can’t find your car, call up On-star, give your password or some way to distinguish yourself, and ask them to momentarily turn on the car alarm. If you aren’t close enough to the car to hear the car alarm, maybe you shouldn’t be driving.

This would be the easiest idea to implement as it requires no extra hardware or software besides On-star’s ability to remotely activate the car alarm (not sure if they have this capability right now). The one issue would be if the car is parked underground and cannot receive the activation signal. Higher tech solutions could involve the car’s navigation system and a cell phone interface that displays your cars location on a map, but this becomes a problem in multilevel parking lots. Of course you could just be responsible and remember where you parked your car.

Labels: car, service