RST hopes to avoid collisions and collect six new employees

Ever back your car into something? Hard? Don’t wish your car could warn you that you’re about to crunch someone’s bumper? RST (Radar Safety Technologies) plans to make that possible soon.

The eight-person firm, based in Troy, has high hopes for a new product called FrontAlert. Planned for a spring launch, the collision alert system warns motorists about objects in a vehicle’s path to help prevent collisions.

“We want to produce the best in collision alert systems, starting the in second quarter 08,” says Jerry Barylak, vice president of marketing for RST.

If all goes well, RST plans to hire six more people by the end of the year. Most of those jobs would be engineers and technical professionals. Not bad for a  company just two years old.

The idea for the technology is 55 years in the making, tracing its genesis to company founder George Rashid Sr.’s brush with catastrophe when fog nearly caused his family to have a serious accident. 

Rashid Sr started working on a primitive radar system that took up much of the car’s space …but worked! The idea turned into a family enterprise with Rashid and his three sons continuing to work on the system for decades. That work eventually led to a patent in 1999 and the formation of RST in 2006.

Source: Jerry Barylak, vice president of marketing for RST
Writer: Jon Zemke