Grandiose World Changing Theory Time

I haven't done one of these since I made a modest proposal.

BUT!

A few days ago my car was very nearly involved in an encounter at an intersection.  Nobody was hurt but the other driver was in the wrong but simply sped away with his middle finger raised proudly [1]

By the time I got home I had cooled down enough to stop swearing at him and settled down for a good hard think about road safety, the vehicles that we all use and how I can make it safer for everyone. [2]

THEORY 1:

Car seats face the wrong way.

The back seats do at any rate since, if the car were to be in a crash the back passengers would have a strong back seat shielding them from the worst of the impact. I know that there were a few breeds of car made with the back seats looking out the rear window but these were few and far between so the concept never really caught on [3]

SOLUTION:

Install a swivel in each seat so that when an accident happens the seats turn their passengers away from the impact.

PRO:

• Cars will need to be redisigned from the ground up. This will result in more jobs and money flowing into the economy.

CON:

• It will take a lot of testing before it is ready for the open market.
• It probably won't work on Motorbikes.
• It will only be a matter of time before a seat, spinning out of control will end up on Youtube where it will get a million hits and be just another viral thing waiting to be replaced by the next shiny thing that comes along.

CONCLUSION:

• Probably not going to work that well.

THEORY 2:

Lasers!  It'll be just like Tron!

If you've ever played any sort of racing game then you'll be already know about the “ghost car”

For those of you who don't know it's essentially a transparant car of the lap that you have just completed which you can race against in order to try and get a better time [4].

But what if we incorperated that into real life?

SOLUTION:

By attaching a laser pointer to the vehicle and aiming the beam a car length in front of us we will be able to see exactly where the car will be in the very near future.

PROS:

• Since drivers will be able to see “into the future” [5] it will assist greatly with blind corners or poorly designed intersections where you are unable to properly see oncoming traffic and pulling out is always a risk.
• For the laser to be strong enough to be visible from the drivers seat it will have to be strong enough to melt the tar on the road. This will mean an influx of jobs for the large amount of people that were just laid off from the automobile manufacturing plants.

CONS:

• Two weeks after this becomes standard issue Youtube will show a video of boy racers writing their names in the road with the lasers. Not only does it go viral but it attracts the news networks as well [6].

CONCLUSION:

• You know who chases laser pointers? Cats. You don't want to be a cat do you? [7]

THEORY 3:

Tanks for everyone!

Its obvious that much of the problems of vehicles on the roads stem from the fact that there are so many different types of drivers out there. Some are confident and reckless while others are nervous and drive more carefully than they need to.

SOLUTION:

The global price of fuel is locked into 1960's prices and all cars are replaced with tanks.

PROS:

• All those who were terrified of a ding in their car before can now drive with no problems thanks to the quarter inch armour plating.
• Events of road rage drop to almost nothing in the face of a 90mm high powered rebuttal.
• The lasered up roads won't matter anymore and all those engineers can go back to working in the auto factories [8]

CONS:

• Why are there six pedals when there are only four directions?
• Limited personal space. If a tank isn't big enough to be used as a family vehicle then it may be swapped for an Armoured Personal Carrier.

CONCLUSION:

• What is the one thing that armies are always buying more of? Tanks.  
• What happens to the old ones? Well once they were sold off to other countries but now they'll just be traded in down at the local tank yard.  The money stays in the country and the economy grows ever more stable.

Notes:

1. As you do
2. I wont go into riding horses isn't an option this time. But fear not!  The Horseback Revolution draws ever nearer comrades.
3. Probably because the phrase “Won't somebody think of the children?” hadn't been invented. Lucky them.
4. Unless its NASCAR and then all you'll be doing is turning left slightly faster than last time.
5. We'll talk to marketing.
6. But at least we don't see that stupid spinning seat anymore.
7. With apologies to furries in the audience
8. "My name is Damien and my dad makes tanks”