previous idea | index| next idea

Innovations for Cars, and Driver Karma

March 12, 2003

Some things I have thought of for vehicular innovations:

• Positive feedback device. We already have horns that we honk when other drivers piss us off. These harsh auditory devices have been somewhat co-opted for pleasantries... we give a friend a little "toot-toot", for example. But horns and honking is so negative. I really think cars need a positive sound device. Something we can ring when someone does something good. "Hey, that was a nice merge! *ring* *ring*", or, "Oh, thank you for letting me get into this line of traffic *ring* *ring*", or, "My, it was kind of you to move over a lane when you saw me entering the highway *ring* *ring*", or, "It seems we both came to this 4-way stop at the same time. Why don't you go first. *ring* *ring*"
• Brake lights that indicate the braking intensity. These days, brake lights are binary: you can tell that the car in front of you is braking, or not braking. But what's really important is how hard someone is braking. Brake lights should glow stronger depending on how hard someone is braking. In addition, if someone has to do a really quick stop - slam on the brakes - the brake lights should strobe. I'll bet there is evidence that indicates that many rear-end collisions happen because the person in back didn't know how quickly the person in front was braking.
• Intervehicular communication. I want to be able to contact the car in front of me by calling out its licence plate number. "ABC-123, something has just fallen off your roof." Cars that are receiving messages should be able to accept or decline an incoming message. These days, there are millions of people on the road at any given time, and they are all independent. In reality, those millions of people are peers, because they are on the same road together at the same time. As peers, they are in a unique position to help each other. We're all in this together, but the current technology demands that we be separate from each other.

Here's an innovation that should apply to people themselves, instead of cars: Driver Karma. Similar to feedback on eBay. When you do something nice, like let someone into traffic, you get good karma. When you do something bad, like cut someone off on the highway, you get bad karma.

I think Driver Karma is a great idea, because for one thing it would give the community of drivers the ability to praise or chastise someone for doing something good or bad in the absence of law enforcement authorities. I wish I had blue lights in my car so I could pull people over for throwing coffee cups out of their windows, or for driving like an absolute idiot. Driver Karma would give drivers a way to give feedback to other drivers.

Incidents of roadrage would be decreased, because right now the only ways we have of dealing with someone who angers us on the road is to repress it, or go up to their car and rough them up. With Driver Karma, we can express our anger.

Drivers themselves would have more incentive to be good on the road. A lot of people probably do bad things because no one with authority is looking. With Driver Karma, we all would be looking. Who would want to drive around with bad karma? It's a personal pride thing. People would have more incentive to be good because others can critique them. Maybe the karma of the driver could be evident by trendy little colored lights on the front and back bumpers. (After all, turn signals were originally a fad that turned out to be quite beneficial. And with karma, more people would use their blinker, because I'll bad-karma someone who turns without signaling!)

Driver Karma would take advantage of current technology to apply the karma to the driver, not the car. It holds someone personally accountable for their driving skill and thoughtfullness. When they hop into a car, the car's Karma Reader would detect the driver and display his or her karma on those indicators.

Driver Karma. It's the Future.

All original thoughts and ideas are Copyright © 2003, 2004 David Koelle. All Rights Reserved. Any resemblance to your own ideas is purely coincidental, unless otherwise noted. "DaveKoelle.com Ideas" is hosted by Kapowee and uses remotely-hosted tools from Webslice.