New car gadget that lets you "shoot" a beam of light at the license plate of a bad driver (for example). The driver's plate number then is accessed at a website and a comment is stored along with it. Ideally it could even be a kind of "incident report" with comments from the user who zapped them. Some incidents would be bad, but some incidents could also be good -- like when someone lets you in, or is driving responsibly. Really bad drivers would have lots of "hits" with many different explanations of what they do wrong. Then whenever a driver is going up on charges for something, the records from this website could be submitted into evidence to support that they are poor drivers. How many times have you been at a light and some jerk is on a cell phone and gives you the finger for honking? Zap eachother and a little record of the incident is recorded. The flipside to this is that there is no way to regulate what kind of responses are there, except the volume of hits. Obviously everyone will have a few hits that they are a bad driver (mainly because of the old addage that everyone sucks at driving), but overall the types of hits would be a good way to get an idea of what kind of driver you are. Also, if someone is nice and lets you in you could zap them and put down that they are courteous! This could also expand to the neighborhood watch... where citizens could zap the drug dealers. Police time could be more efficient with this kind of community reporting, right? :)
-- dolo, Mar 30 2002

Car-Ma http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Car-Ma
A perennial favorite [reensure, Mar 31 2002]

do people actually ring these numbers http://www.howsmydriving.com.au/
this is the Aussie version, cannot find a link for the UK [po, Mar 31 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

I dunno, I kind of like this idea. I do think, though, that it might be quite difficult to defend yourself against those who "zap" you just for the hell of it . . . because they don't like the way you look or what you drive (think SUV and all the tiresome rants about them).
-- bristolz, Mar 30 2002


Holding my piece for indiscriminant or taunting use of the word 'idiot'. Halfbaked (see link)
-- reensure, Mar 31 2002


Can you say "Police State"? I knew that you could.
-- lumpy, Mar 31 2002


WAY too many ways this could be exploited or get out of control. Think of the political figures driving around. Also, if you see a drug dealer, I'm fairly sure the police take anonymous tips.
-- NeverDie, Mar 31 2002


It's hard enough to simply write down what you recollect seeing - or - doing anything which resembles taking notes/calling - without being spotted as a snitch - let alone - being able to point <key word> accurately </key word>with any such device at a moving vehicle - even without concern for retaliation.
-- thumbwax, Mar 31 2002


Yes, that is true, tw. I think this appealed to me simply because there is some nice thinking. I don't know how practical it would be.
-- bristolz, Mar 31 2002


maybe one way to cut down on abuse would be to accept only positive ratings, not negative ones. if someone is courteous, give them a point.
-- friday, Mar 08 2003



random, halfbakery