A generation of boys grew up in awe of Kitt, the black Pontiac Trans-Am that was the real star of Knight Rider. Even though we all knew that this car was a chunk of North American tat, a vehicle that could come to your rescue was a powerful idea. Your current ride may not reach 300mph (as Kitt was purportedly able to do), or have bodywork resistant to light weaponry, but you can at least install the clever new Neo-Trac security system that will enable the car to alert the police to its exact location after an accident - even if you are out of mobile-phone range or unconscious.

The Neo-Trac, which was developed by Unipart, is a black box-type gadget with an acceleration sensor. The maker says this can detect “abrupt changes in speed or direction of the vehicle and is activated in micro-seconds if the car runs into something, is shunted from behind or turns over”.

If you are, heaven forbid, in a serious accident, the Neo-Trac sends out a signal to “trained operatives” at a permanently manned response centre. As the box houses a GPS-based tracking device, these operatives can pinpoint its location to within a few yards - underground locations excepted - and then alert the emergency services.

Accidents aside, if the car moves without the owner’s ID tag on board, the same response centre will call you to ask if it is being stolen. And if it is, the long arm of the law will be dispatched as the vehicle is tracked by the centre. When the car stops safely, the police can authorise the centre to remotely disable it, avoiding a high-speed chase.

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The Neo-Trac system starts at £615, plus a £185 annual fee. The maker says the box can be fitted discreetly to almost any car, or indeed motorbike. Does it work, though? Unipart trumpets that the Neo-Trac can distinguish between small bumps, serious bangs or a roll. It also says the system “meets all the requirements of the Association of Chief Police Officers [Acpo] and the insurance industry’s Thatcham category 5 security standard”. This sounds impressive, as Acpo is the body that sets police operational policy and Thatcham is the not-for-profit centre set up by the insurance industry for testing vehicle security kit.

Hold on, though, because the Thatcham category 5 standard referred to only applies to GPS-based systems that can track and then remotely disable a vehicle, and there are several on the market. When contacted, Thatcham said the Neo-Trac’s antitheft feature conforms to category 5 but the accident-reporting tool has yet to be tested, though this was “a proposal for the future”. As for Acpo, it refused to endorse any specific system, but said “we welcome any technological development that may help to reduce crime, avoid pursuits developing and potentially save lives by alerting the emergency services to a serious collision”.

So Unipart appears to have been gilding the lily. The Neo-Trac may ultimately live up to its claims but the accident-reporting feature has not yet been independently tested. When pressed, Unipart admitted as much but said this is because its technology is so new. That’s true, but a few years ago the Sempal SpalSat GPS security system offered an optional crash sensor that would send an “accident alert” to preprogrammed phone numbers. By Sempal’s own admission, it was “quite crude” and was withdrawn after poor sales. Other companies have since offered similar kit.

The biggest shake-up may come from the European Union. A new EU standard known as eCall (part of its Intelligent Car Initiative), would make it compulsory for all new cars to have a factory-fitted black box capable of emitting GPS coordinates to nearby emergency services, and it expects implementation by 2010. Critics fear this technology is a shortcut to road-user charging. But judging from the speed of previous EU projects, we will all own a swish Kitt-type vehicle that can apprehend baddies before eCall takes off.

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