Ford Focus 2011 video shows tech that lets you take your eyes off the road

There are three certainties in life -- death, taxes and unwavering inevitability that at some point in your existence, you'll drive a Ford Focus. In the past, the latter has usually been done out of necessity rather than desire, but that's all set to change because the latest, 2011 Ford Focus, is several different flavours of awesome.

The car is rammed to the hilt with the latest automotive gizmos, including an active city stop feature, which finally allows drivers to look at whatever they like -- newspaper, billboard, cute fellow driver -- without fear of crashing into anything up ahead.

The system uses a forward-facing Lidar scanner mounted just ahead of the rear-view mirror to scan the road for obstacles. If it detects you're about to collide with something or someone, and you haven't responded, because you're busy writing your phone number in the condensation on your side window, the Focus' drive-by-wire braking system automatically applies the anchors to bring you to a safe stop. Which won't look cool.

The car lets you snooze while going around corners, too, thanks to cameras that watch the road for lane markings. Should you narcoleptically drift out of lane, the car's electronic steering system physically pulls the vehicle back into the centre of the lane, waking you up sharpish, we'd imagine.

We don't actually recommend falling asleep or ogling passersby, but should you forget basic driving safety, the new Focus has more tech than ever to save your unroadworthy life. Combine the Lidar with the adaptive cruise control feature, which automatically matches your speed with that of the car in front, and the new 2011 Ford Focus virtually drives itself.

Anyway we're forcing you to drag your eyes across a mountain of text when you should be having them caressed by our video review. Have a gander at all these features (plus automatic parallel parking and cameras that look out for road signs) by hitting play in the video above.

•  Produced by Drew Stearne. Presented by Rory Reid.