(subtitled Prufrock's somewhat-drunk thread) I have an invisible car. Or at least that's how it often seems when I'm driving around and other cars are jolting out in front of me or people walking blithely around. So I've come up with a few ideas for making my car more visible. Here's one of them: The parking structures at work are labyrinthine and cavernous, and it can be hard to see when a Mario Andretti wannabe is zooming around. So to show that I'm also there, lurking just around a corner, what if I had lasers projecting an image on the ground a few feet in front of my car: So when approaching an intersection where visibility is blocked by Yank-tanks, the laser lights would still be visible, and should anyone run into them it would be harmless. Probably. I suppose the lights could reflect, but I'm thinking the lasers wouldn't have to be all that powerful. They could be turned on and off from an interior switch. The lasers probably wouldn't be very visible in daylight, but the underground parking structures might be dark enough. And anyway, lasers! It'd be really cool! Like those under-car lights that are supposed to make a car look like it's hovering, but practical since they would help you be seen around corners. And pedestrians would look up from their iPhones to be mesmerized by the mini light show. Of course, there are issues of what vehicular modifications are legal - e.g. no red lights anywhere but the back end, no strobe or blue lights, etc (it varies from state to state). They'd probably be classified as under-body lights, and since teenagers are fans of under-body lights they're often considered illegal and ticketable by cops even in places where they're technically legal. But if I only used it in the privately-owned garages at home and at work, could cops even do anything about it? Lasers are available from places like this: http://www.diytrade.com/china/pd/7498316/12_Channels_Stage_Laser_Lights_S_06.html#normal_img They're generally pretty expensive, and if one was mounted in the front of a car it'd be prone to damage. But might this be a good idea to make a car more visible? It seems like a pretty obvious one that would have already been considered to avoid those common front-end low-speed collisions, so maybe there are good reasons we don't all have lasers on our cars that I haven't thought if yet. And even when think I've come up with a new idea, the search engine on the US Patent/Trademark Office website often proves me wrong.
