Meet the OOONO CO-DRIVER NO2, a pocket-sized puck that wants to keep your eyes off screens and on the road.
The Danish firm behind it has already shifted more than four million units in Germany and is now taking aim at the UK, pitching a simple idea: drivers warn each other, the device does the nudging.
There’s no touchscreen, no map and no fiddly menus. The NO2 pairs to your phone, sits on your dash and talks in beeps and a quick flash of light. Tap its single button to confirm what you’ve just seen; the next driver gets an early heads-up. It’s community traffic reporting boiled down to a click.
Alerts cover fixed, mobile and average speed cameras (plus red-light cameras), roadworks, temporary hazards, crashes and debris. The NO2 version integrates with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, then gets out of the way. It wakes when you drive and shuts up when you park.
OOONO’s pitch leans on a growing gripe: modern car screens can be a distraction. Its answer is subtraction.
One widget, one job. The company says the device’s strength is the density of live reports from nearby users, which can update faster than standard navigation apps. Each confirmation improves the signal for everyone else on the same stretch.
The UK effort is being fronted by chief operating officer Sean Morris, who previously held engineering roles at Aston Martin and Continental. He calls the NO2 a “game-changer” for road safety and daily driving, arguing that many people don’t fire up full navigation for short hops but still want timely warnings.
The appeal is obvious: a low-cost co-pilot that doesn’t demand attention. If OOONO can build a large UK crowd as it did on the old continent, that single beep could save a lot of glances — and a few licence points.
