Patent application
To/ Mr One Biertankard
Patent office
Planck Centre
Swiss City
Arcturus Five
From/ A Kranc
Dear Sir
I hereby apply for a patent for a traffic speed measurement and control system.
The system has the following components:-
A small plate at the front and rear of each vehicle. The colour of the plate will depend on the use of the vehicle and hence its allowed speed, some examples of speeds and calculated colours are shown below.. I can provide these colours in Ångstrom units if you prefer.
1 – Heavy goods vehicle 56 clicks = Pink
2 – Private family vehicle 70 “ = Turquoise
3 – Public service vehicle such as a bus or coach 60 “ = Peach
4 – PPV – Person Propelled Vehicle such as a bicycle 30 “ = Red
A LCD screen and a camera attached to lamp posts or road bridges.
As this system is progressively introduced, I would expect that vehicle designers will incorporate these speed plates into the vehicle design, leading to some very camp HGVs.
As you know, the speed of light in our Arcturus system has been measured by our scientists at 8671 kph. This means that the speed of any of the above vehicles will be a measurable percentage of the speed of light. As they move towards an observer – the camera on the lamp post in this case – the frequency of the light from the vehicle will appear to increase because of the doppler effect and so the colour of the attached plate will be seen to change, moving more towards the blue end of the visible light spectrum. Speeders will probably be known as ‘Blueys’ in the future.
As you know, boy racers are particularly dangerous as excessive speed results in a very high doppler shift, leading to microwave interference with mobile phones and extreme cases, involving very high speeds, may result in X Ray emissions so pedestrians become see thru’.
The plates on the rear of the vehicles will all be red as we don’t want buses reversing at 70 clicks do we?
The speed limit of any particular stretch of road can be set by altering the colour on the LCD screen. This colour will be picked up by the on-board sensor in the vehicle and indicated on its dashboard. This speed can be changed for small areas and depending on the time. For example it can be reduced outside schools at finish time and increased on motorways when the traffic is light.
The camera on the lamp posts / bridges will measure the frequency of the light coming from the vehicle, compare it with the colour on the screen and so can list all vehicles exceeding the speed limit.
A feedback loop can easily be put in place to control the speed of vehicles to the speed selected so there will be no speeding vehicles at all.
I think this will be a major contribution to road safety.
A futher possibility is to use a control vehicle running at a set speed then a convoy can be set up behind it with each of the convoy vehicles being automatically controlled to run at the same speed as the control vehicle thus increasing the density of cars on the roads and reducing the need for road building. We could call these convoys ‘Road trains’ or ‘Chemin des Fears.’
All of the above systems will use existing technology so should be cheap to install. It is easier now that all vehicles on the road are electrcally powered from the induction strip buried in the road surface which can also carry the control signals without any extra wiring.
If you grant this patent, I plan to adapt it for use on Betelgeuse 7 where the speed of light is 23.07 kph. This system will require extensive testing due to everyone potentially disappearing because of the doppler shift at relatively low speeds into the X Ray range. I guess this is why this planet is notorious for its low traffic speeds but surprisingly high road death rate. As you know, people are also often killed by thunderstorms because they don’t see them coming.
Thank you for your consideration
Autoplex Kranc – ITCV consultant.
No comments:
Post a Comment