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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Okay I'm thinking of a very Shenzen kind of gizmo for your car that projects a bright red laser "keep out" box on the road in front of your car which is adjusted in size for your current speed.

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We have something like that in eu with road markings. Both for clear weather and fog/rain. They mark some of the lines differently, and tell you how many lines you should have between you and the car in front. I think they were first trialed and then printed in several places.

There's a couple of bits of motorway in England with that, I'm pretty sure the M6 and the M1. There are white chevrons painted on the road and you keep two of them between you and the car in front.

Also "Keep Two Chevrons Apart" is going to be the name of my specialist Citroën breaker's yard.

And on the M5 between Gloucester and Bristol.

Cool. But I'm thinking this box floats in front of your car on the road in real time. See you're driving and ahead of you on the road is this box. At night it might interfere with your night vision, might have to workshop that a bit.

I think a lot of people would just consider that a challenge.

On the occasion when I am towing our travel trailer, it is really incredible how unsafe that makes other drivers act around me. They will jam themselves in front of me at all costs, with no consideration for physics.

I see this happen to semi trucks on the highway. People interpret big open space as a place to merge. As you say, people have no consideration for why there might be a large space in front of a semi. A 50k lb+ truck hitting the back of a ~4k lb vehicle is not pretty.

See for a truck it could say "DEATH ZONE KEEP CLEAR" which would be accurate. Given that it's projected it could rotate through various languages too.

There was a bike light that projects a bike lane onto the road, not sure why they are not more popular.

Can't wait to get blinded by lasers when cars are going over bumps and speed humps.

I know you were probably writing tongue in cheek, but that is one of those "solutions" that doesn't stop bad actors and makes good actors more miserable than usual.

Like LED headlights :-). It would kind of be a concern except that geometry in in your favor. The angle down they would have to shine + the size related to speed would result in the lasers pretty much always hitting the street except perhaps if you were at the top of Gough[1].

[1] SF drivers will get that.

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