Christopher Hanson-Abbott obituary

My partner, Christopher Hanson-Abbott, who has died aged 92, devoted much of his life to making the world a safer place. A pioneer of vehicle safety technology, he introduced reversing alarms from Japan to Britain and later helped develop broadband reversing alarm technology that has saved countless lives worldwide. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Chris was the son of Clifford Hanson-Abbott, an RAF officer, and Edna (nee Johnson), a good club golfer. During the second world war, the family moved frequently between RAF stations across Britain. Fascinated by aviation, Chris developed a lifelong love of aircraft and could identify virtually every plane that flew overhead. Educated at Haileybury in Hertfordshire, and later at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Chris was commissioned into the Royal Artillery before becoming a shipbroker at the Baltic Exchange. His career took him to Hong Kong and Japan, where he first encountered reversing alarms, then unknown in Britain. In 1976 he founded Brigade Electronics and became the first person to introduce reversing alarms commercially to the UK. Later, working with his Japanese colleague Masato Yamashita, he helped pioneer the use of multifreq