Most of the gear people carry in their vehicles is about comfort — a good phone mount, a car vac, maybe a portable jump starter for the optimistic. But there’s a quieter category of car gear that doesn’t get talked about as much: the stuff you carry precisely because you hope it stays useless.
I’ve been building out my 4Runner’s kit for a while now, starting with practical tools like the Ryobi cordless tire inflator and working outward from there. Along the way, I ended up with four items that represent two very different mindsets — three that sit dormant and one that earns its keep almost weekly. Here’s what I carry and why I’m not giving any of it up.
The resqme Original Emergency Keychain Car Escape Tool is the kind of purchase that feels almost silly until you actually think about when you’d need it. It’s an $8.47 two-in-one: a recessed stainless-steel blade that slices through a jammed seatbelt in one clean pull, and a spring-loaded spike on the opposite end that punches through tempered glass windows. The whole thing is about the size of a thick USB drive.
The reason it lives on my keychain rather than tucked in a glove box comes down to one scenario: you’re upside down, water is rising, and the seatbelt won’t release. A tool in the center console isn’t reaching you in that situation. Clipped to my keychain, it’s already in my hand before I reach the door. The window breaker resets itself after each use, and the blade sits recessed deep enough that it’s never snagged anything in my pocket. For eight dollars, I genuinely don’t understand why more people don’t have one.
With this tiny pouch in my gear bag, I can stay prepared for any tech emergency that might come up.
I’ve been running a dash cam for over a year now. My setup came out of not wanting to spend $150 on a dedicated camera — I repurposed an old iPod Touch with a free app and a cheap windshield mount, and it stuck. That was over a year ago. Pull up any clip, and the GPS coordinates, speed, and timestamp are already baked in.
What you’re really paying for with a dash cam is a neutral witness. Not for the fender bender you saw coming. For the one where someone runs a light, clips you, and suddenly can’t remember what happened. The loop recording takes care of itself — old clips make way for new ones, no manual cleanup required. The peace of mind isn’t about reviewing footage obsessively. It’s knowing that if something does happen, you’re not walking into an insurance dispute with nothing but your word.
I keep my iPhone 16 Pro Max mounted in the 4Runner via CarPlay. Before I switched to a wireless setup, I went through a period of preferring wired CarPlay for its reliability — but either way, the phone is up front and active while I drive. The phone is also doing something most people forget about.
Crash Detection pulls data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and barometer simultaneously, looking for the physical signature of a serious impact. Detect one, get no response within roughly 20 seconds — it dials 911 and sends your location without you touching anything, with no setup and no subscription. It runs in the background every time you drive. There are documented false positives, mostly from hard braking or amusement park rides. Getting on the phone with a 911 dispatcher to explain that you hit a pothole too hard is embarrassing. It’s also fine.
Everything else I’ve mentioned is emergency gear in the truest sense — it sits there, doing nothing, and you hope it keeps doing nothing. The Ryobi inflator is different. It’s technically on the emergency list, but for less urgent cases.
In Northern Indiana, a 30-degree overnight swing isn’t unusual — and tire pressure follows temperature down, losing roughly a pound per square inch for every 10 degrees. That low-pressure warning light showing up before you’ve left the driveway is its own kind of tedious. The PCL001B has a digital pressure readout, dials in to your target PSI, and cuts off automatically when it gets there. At $39.97 tool-only, it’s hard to argue with the value, especially against what gas station air machines cost in quarters and frustration. And if you’re already in the Ryobi ONE+ ecosystem, you’ve probably got a compatible battery sitting on a charger at home right now.
The most memorable use so far was inflating a double stroller at a charity walk — it handled all four tires while everyone else was still unloading the car. Beyond that, it’s come in handy for a kid’s bike, a basketball, and a pool float at a cookout. It’s the item on this list that stopped being emergency gear the moment I put it in the truck. I have an older model, but the newer design works even better.
Add it up, and the total outlay across all four items is under $60 — assuming you already own the iPhone and have Ryobi batteries. The resqme tool is $8. The dash cam was a $25 mount on top of a device I already owned. The inflator is $40. I haven’t used any of these items for anything serious yet. I intend to keep it that way. But the cost of not having them — and needing them — is a number I’d rather not calculate.
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