Annually, thousands of people in the United States perish in car accidents and many more are injured. If you survive the ordeal, do you know how to act later? Knowing what to do is essential because this can minimize injuries, keep costs down and hasten the repair process.

Start by being prepared. Have an emergency kit hidden in your glove compartment. Make it a point to carry a mobile phone, pen and paper to take notes, a flashlight, a disposable camera to take pics of the vehicles, and a card with information about your allergies or conditions that require special attention. Likewise keep a list of contact numbers of law enforcement agencies if you need to call them. Other essential items that you can put in the trunk are a set of cones, warning triangles or emergency flares.

If you had a minor accident and emerged with no serious injuries, take your vehicle to the side of the road and keep it away from other vehicles. Abandoning your car in the middle of the road can cause more accidents and injuries. If you cant drive your car, remain inside the vehicle with seatbelts on until help arrives. Keep hazard lights on and use cones, flares or warning triangles to get the attention of other vehicles.

Exchange information with the other driver. Get their name, address, phone number, insurance company, policy number, driver license number and license plate number. If the driver’s name differs from the name of the insured, establish what the relationship is and note the name and address of every person.

Get details of every vehicle involved in the accident – the year, make, model and color – including the exact spot of the accident. Remain polite and remain as calm as you possibly can. Having a clear head will allow you to make decisions that can reduce unnecessary burdens in the future.

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Remember a few years ago when texting was the new thing? Remember when a lot of people still didn’t really know how to use it? (oh wait, that’s still true). Heck, cell phones themselves are still a pretty new concept. Have you noticed, though, how much the idea of what a cell phone is and does has changed? The fact is, the evolution of the phone is far from over–smartphone apps are still a new concept, and the technology that they keep applying in news ways isn’t done changing either. Any guesses as to what a cell phone will be 20 years from now? 50? Me neither, but here are some of the basic technologies behind the latest cell phone innovations–see if you can envision what will come next.

One of the latest big advances has been to use an accelerometer to detect and track the phone’s motions. Some of the first applications of this technology have been in the new cell phone games that draw some funny looks if you play them in public as you tip for phone from side to side. Smartphones can read that! They can also track your movement for navigation apps or even automatic collision notification (think Onstar). And this is just in the first few years that the technology has existed! Who knows where it’ll go from here?

Then there’s GPS–you probably already know a bit about the usefulness of GPS. Not only can you know precisely where you are, you can know precisely where everything else is, too, and precisely which roads will take you there. Imagine taking this to the next step–your phone alerting you automatically, for example, when severe weather is nearby, or you enter a high crime area. Okay, that already exists. Now try to imagine what comes next–any ideas?

Internet on your cell phone? If you could ask some people in the 80′s when they thought that that could happen, you wouldn’t get very accurate answers (even assuming that they knew what the internet was). Not only has internet arrived on phones faster than we could’ve imagined, it’s much, much cooler than handheld Pacman. You no longer need to be stuck in your living room to have the world at your fingertips, and this is only in the first few years, relatively speaking, that wireless internet has existed.

Rest assured, with all the competition to see which phone company can impress you more, the future will keep coming faster and faster. The icing on the cake is that the motivation behind it all is to cater more and more to us, the consumers. Never in the history of the world has a single generation seen so much change in how the world works, and we can only imagine what new idea will be next.

To see one of the latest and most innovative phone apps currently on the market, check out the My-911 car safety app right now!

From seat belts to airbags to Onstar, car safety keeps advancing and it appears that My911′s new phone app is the next step in making your car travel as safe as possible. Technology starts responding to crashes before you or I can- your air bags are fast enough to meet you halfway to the dashboard, for example. The competition to provide the greatest automobile safety has been fierce, and as usual, we the consumers are the winners. Recently, concepts like Onstar have pushed things further, beginning the emergency response process before you could get your phone out of your pocket. The next step has been to get this automatic collision notification on your smartphone, and My911 has done it.

This may seem like it’s asking a bit much of your phone, but that’s the fun of cutting-edge technology. If you’ve seen a teenager on the bus, tilting his phone back and forth, you’ve seen the accelerometer that comes in smartphones in action. This technology also helps track your movement if you have a navigation system, and now My911 has patented a way for it to detect crash level G-forces and automatically get the emergency response ball rolling so that help can arrive as soon as possible.

Since your phone can now sense a car crash, the next logical step is for it to do what you would do anyway, only faster, more precisely, and automatically. Because smartphones also come equipped with GPS, they can not only sense the crash, but explain where you are and how to get there faster than any human, conscious or not.

But what if your phone is wrong? First, you can manually cancel the automatic collision notification. Then, even if the call does go through, the person who picks up is an operator who will attempt to talk to you before sending your location to the emergency response center. This concept didn’t exist a few years ago, and now it can be the norm for us!

Get caught up on the new automatic collision response wave. Hear all about why the My-911 smartphone app is unrivaled in keeping you safe.

As far as accidents go, few are more common or scarier than car accidents. The scariest part, however, is the unknown- once you know what to do before and after you crash, you can have much more peace of mind on the road. There are a few simple things to have and know so that when an accident happens, and they always do, you can be prepared. Following are 3 tips that will leave to ready to respond when a car accident happens to you.

Keep Your Cell Phone On Hand!

Unless your family car is an ambulance, your ability to respond to a serious injury is very limited. The sooner you can alert the emergency response paramedics, the better. A camera phone is also very useful as you will be able to document the accident on the spot. This will be very helpful as you work with your insurance company to assess the coverage that you will need. Finally, if you have never heard of automatic crash response, it’s time to look into it. There are phone apps available that can leave you feeling secure about the risks of car travel.

Don’t Drive Without the Basic Supplies

You don’t need much space in your car to fit some simple safety items in your car. Just keep a simple first-aid kit, a flashlight, and some reflective cones and road flares in a corner of the trunk. You will feel much better knowing that you have these things on hand in case of injury. When accidents happen at night, simply being able to see what you’re doing is a commodity that it’s easy to take for granted. In the case of a roadside emergency, especially on the freeway at night, visibility means safety- just as much as you want to be able to see, you want other drivers to see you.

Know How to React to the Accident

Every accident is different, but all are stressful. It is important to be able to evaluate your situation quickly. Often times car crashes are simple enough to resolve: get off the road, exchange insurance info, and the rest is paperwork. But what happens if someone’s hurt? Or what if the car is disabled and it’s still in the road? For these reasons it’s essential that emergency response personnel be alerted as soon as possible, be it by automatic crash response or a standard 9-11 call. Your top priority is always safety- get out of danger. It is important to note that, if you are unable to leave the car because of car damage or personal injury (like a broken leg), it is possible that the safest place until help arrives may be in your seat, with the seatbelt on. Be aware of this possibility, as you don’t want to be halfway out of the vehicle when it’s hit by another car unable to stop in time.

Your ability to respond effectively to car accidents and other roadside emergencies will (hopefully) not be used very often, but it is important to feel prepared. Luckily, preparation and peace of mind are very cheap and easy in this case. Prepare physically by having the things you’ll need on hand, and mentally by knowing what to do, and much of the fear surrounding car accidents dissipates.

If you haven’t heard about My911′s new phone app yet, find out all about their automatic collision notification cell phone innovation at www.my-911.com