Okay, this is a little complicated to explain so bear with me. I'm not even sure it's possible to build, but I'll bet there's a smart engineer out there who could put one together.

On new cars there would be an option for a sophisticated light strip to run across the bottom of the rear window, about a foot high and running across the entire length of the window. It would look like a sheet of transparent plastic, easy to see through, with hundreds of tiny light diodes embedded in the plastic in a regular grid. The electric circuitry for the lights would be hitched up to a small radar (or sonar, or laser) system pointing directly behind the car. This radar system would also be linked into the speedometer and have a computer chip similar to the ones in police radar detectors.

Let's say you have one of these in your car. Here's how it works. When a car gets too close behind your vehicle (the computer chip calculates distance + speed to determine what's "too close") the light diodes in the light strip begin to flash out the words PLEASE DON'T TAILGATE. And hopefully the guy riding your tail will get the message and ease up on the gas.

It might even be possible to wire a small camera into the system so that if the car continues to tailgate for more than ten or fifteen seconds, a picture is taken of the license plate of the offending vehicle and transmitted via wireless technology to state police headquarters. And two weeks later the tailgater gets a traffic violation in the mail.

This is probably way too costly to be practical, but wouldn't it be great if we had them?

What do you think of this idea or comment?
(You can change your vote at any time)

I agree

No opinion

I disagree