tech today
Selling Vehicle Safety Systems
Vision Zero is dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of safety equipment in vehicles. Join us as we highlight these technologies and discuss sales strategies retailers can implement today. WORDS BY DAVE MACKINNON
Successful mobile electronics retailers need to be a jack-of-all-trades—and yes, dare I say it, masters. While many of us love creating bespoke audio systems that combine creativity and unique fabrication techniques, just as many retailers excel at remote starter installations or lighting upgrades. One category which deserves more exposure and emphasis is vehicle safety. While these aren’t glamorous, bragged-about upgrades, they serve a higher purpose. They prevent accidents and injuries. Additionally, they also help when it comes to ringing the register. The Vision Zero Automotive Network is a registered non-profit organization—501(c)3—and it’s dedicated to eliminating injuries and deaths caused
48 Mobile Electronics August 2020
by motor vehicle accidents. Vision Zero works with safety-system manufacturers, retailers and the press to get Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) into consumer vehicles. Vision Zero has partnered with Mobile Electronics magazine and MEA to publish a series of articles that highlight the technologies available to retailers to help achieve the goal of eliminating up to 10,000 of the 40,000 deaths that occur on our roads and highways. What is Vehicle Safety Technology? Any feature or technology that can prevent an accident is a vehicle safety solution. By extension, any device which can record or document an event is also quite helpful. Our job of providing our
clients with safe vehicles can be as simple as checking a vehicle’s turn signals, headlights and brake lights when the car or truck is checked in and out of the bay. At the other end of the spectrum, retailers can offer backup cameras, parking sensors, blind spot monitoring systems or forward collision warning system solutions as discrete sales opportunities. Even upgrading a vehicle’s headlights to provide more light on the sides of the road can help drivers see pedestrians and cyclists more easily. From a retailer’s perspective, the best part is that many of these projects are labor-intensive, making them profitable. Quite simply, you are less likely to have someone haggle over the price of a parking sensor system
