Dear Innovative Inventors (Idea 1: Red Light Brakes)

Today I’m starting a new series where I try and pitch some amazingly great, totally not crazy ideas, in the hopes that someone somewhere will *light bulb* them into the real thing. So, let’s jump right in.

Dear Innovative Inventors Looking to Change the World,

I know you’re out there. You’re sitting behind your computer. You’re daydreaming at your desk. You’re dying to create the “next big thing,” but instead you’re stuck on the 9 to 5 circuit, drowning in junk mail and bad ideas. Well, call me Super…something, because my brain has collected a series of ideas that need to be morphed into tangible life changers and there’s no time to waste! Grab a pen, some graph paper, and a banana for sustenance because we are about to revolutionize the planet. (Well, kind of)

1) Red Light Brakes

At one point or another, we’ve all run a red light. Whether it be by accident or on purpose, it happens, that’s just a fact. However that doesn’t make it okay, or safe, or something that should continue. In fact a huge percentage of car accidents happen as a result of this very action. So, I propose to add something to the surface of the street that will prevent anyone—even those of us who are running EXTREMELY late and just have to squeak through—from running a red light.

You know those moving walkways you find at the airport? The ones where half of the passengers are treating it like a second set of legs and the other half are treating it like a star on Mario Kart and are blowing past people like it’s the final lap of Rainbow Road? Well stick those puppies in reverse and add them to the asphalt. It will be like the street’s alter ego that only shows up when it can sense that a car is about to run a red light.

Picture it. The light is a figurative orange (a.k.a the middle point between yellow and red), and an oncoming car pumps the gas pedal. The street will sense this dangerous bout of acceleration and morph X-men Mystique style into a backwards treadmill and stop him right at the line. No horns are honked, no collisions are made.

I’d also recommend wiring the walkways to a speaker, which will activate when a car is in the process of being stopped. Ideally it would play The Cha Cha Slide so that when the driver floors it, Dj Casper will chime in with, “TAKE IT BACK NOW Y’ALL.”

Also, if we continue on this same thought process, you know those cars that stop WAY over the line, impeding the entire crosswalk, and you have to watch as an elderly gentleman crutches his way into oncoming traffic, just so he can pick up his granddaughter from preschool? Well, I say we add parts of the street that can lift a car into the air, and spin it in a slow moving circle. Then, if we stick with Dj Casper, we can hit the car with a strobe light and have him announce, “Now it’s time to get FUNKY.” This would, of course, severely humiliate the wrong doer, making him or her far more aware of the limit line, and as an added bonus give the pedestrians a sick beat to walk to.

Until next time, good luck and happy inventing!