Without a doubt, the best way to deal with an emergency or even a surprise inconvenience is before it occurs. Let’s be honest: most of the times we’ve been caught with our pants down, it was by something we knew could happen.
It makes little sense to take precautions against things that are likely never to happen, or those against which you can do little – nuclear war, the zombie apocalypse, or Avengers: Endgame being delayed until next year. It’s still surprising, though, how many people are unprepared for things that are almost bound to happen to you at some point in your life, like retirement, power outages, and roadside breakdowns.
In the case of the latter happening at night, one thing you absolutely need to do is to remain visible. It’s just not always possible to pull onto the shoulder. With cars whizzing by at 80 mph with drivers that are not expecting an obstacle, it’s no surprise that so many accidents involve stalled vehicles.
A well-maintained car doing 70 on the freeway takes roughly 250 feet to come to a standstill after the brakes are slammed on. Every second it takes to notice a stationary vehicle and react increases this figure by another 100 feet. When you keep these figures in mind, it starts to make sense to use an emergency light or flare instead of a reflector, which can easily be missed or mistaken for a road sign.
What sets this emergency light apart from similar products is its high-capacity battery: you can even jump-start your car if you’ve let the battery run down – 15 times on a single charge, supposedly. Aside from that, you can charge your phones from it to call for help, or use it as a portable lamp with a handle that doubles as a stand. Although it’s normally configured as a triangle, which is an internationally recognized warning symbol, you can also separate the three red edge segments for greater versatility. Each is even equipped with a magnetic backing so you can attach it to any handy metal surface or a bicycle.
At the time of writing this product wasn’t available yet, but the design seems pretty polished so it may already be on sale when you’re reading this. We can only hope that it lives up to the expectations its Kickstarter page raised.
