Ford’s New Onboard Software: A Prelude To Rising Accidents

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 30, 1:50PM EDT · Published Jan 8, 5:56AM EST

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Ford’s (NYSE:F) slogan used to be “Have You Driven A Ford Lately?” Those who have not will find that the firm’s new cars come with access to Twitter, online maps, internet radio, and many other things that work over the web.

Ford’s Sync software array has helped the company sell cars. The firm claims that those vehicles with the feature sell twice as fast as those without it. According to The Los Angeles Times, “So far, Sync appears to be helping Ford with its turnaround.”

Sync is also an ideal way to cause a lot of car accidents. A number of state and even the federal government are at work on legislation that would ban the use of cell phones in cars. People typing messages on their BlackBerries apparently get into many more accidents that those who drive their vehicles the old-fashioned way. Many drivers have enough trouble locating the turn signal on new age cars.

Car companies get sued for all sorts of things. Gas tanks that explode. Faulty accelerators. Floor mates that catch people’s feet. The new generation of software-powered cars will make personal liability lawyers a lot of money. Count on it.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.