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Automotive Anti-Static Electricity Grid Supplementation

Another 'harness static electricity' idea.
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It's a well-known and oft-irritating fact that under certain environmental condition, a static electrical charge will accumulate in one's moving automobile. Upon making one's egress from said vehicle, the charge is won't to manifest itself as somewhat of a shock, a nuisance to be sure. I have noted that other travellers of the vehicular persuasion occasionally take to affixing a sliver of rubber to the rearward-facing region of their autos, thereby promoting a continuous discharge from carriage to roadway whilst in motion. Waste!

I propose that an automated metallic rod, extendable in nature and not unlike a radiophonic aerial device, be incorporated by automobile manufacturers into their wares. At carriageway intersections, the aerial would extend to such a length that the lightest touch occurred between its tip and a collection mesh suspended above the roadway. The extension would be precipitated by a radio transmission from a controlling box located at the intersection, and would cause a rapid upwards-then-downwards motion of the aforementioned rod.

I envisage certain parallels between this concept and that of the commonplace "Dodgem Cars" amusement prevalent at so many country fairs and the like, except that this discharge mechanism works in reverse, and feeds into the town's electricity grid.

vigilante, Oct 27 2004


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Annotation:







       "...affixing a sliver of rubber to the rearward-facing region of their autos, thereby promoting a continuous discharge from carriage to roadway..." - huh? How does a rubber strip conduct electricity to the road?
hippo, Oct 27 2004
  

       I've never really understood that myself, but they exist, I assure you. Perhaps they're constructed like radial tyres, with strips of metal within the rubber.
vigilante, Oct 27 2004
  


 

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