Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Our economy needs your help – here is how!

By: Alon Cohen
Whenever someone has an idea, of any sort, which is any good, the most important thing is to socialize that idea with people that can help make that happen – well unless you can do it yourself. Some ideas obviously require capital, and the more socialized they are, the higher the chance that they will be funded and see the light of day. Sometimes and more often than we want, they will just see the light.
One way to socialize ideas is to enter them into an invention contest and even better win. I usually make a point to submit a provisional patent just in case someone wants this really bad, and in case nothing happens, at least I know I created some prior art so everybody will be able to use the idea for the good of others without paying anyone else royalties.
This time I am looking at an idea that I came up with many years ago, to reduce traffic jams. The US and world economy is, as we all know, impeded by the slowness of traffic during rush hours. Reducing the traffic jams problem, on existing roads, without building major new roads can have a dramatic improvement on many aspects of our lives. It can give us the time the economy needs to recuperate.
You can read all about that simple $10 per car concept, here on the competition page of the Tech Briefs site, and see other interesting ideas as well.
The idea is to try and convert regular highly "elastic" and slow line of traffic to a more rigid almost train like line of train cars without giving up control of the car (which is expensive) and by using only our basic normal driving psychology and this low cost idea of a device.
If you want to help me win, and I ask that you do, please register to the site and vote. Every vote counts.
See this video to get more understanding of what this concept is trying to solve, and understand that by dissolving the Phantom Jams as this video names them we can make a difference.

Thanks
Alon