Adhesive Google Car: This Week’s WTF File [News]

google patent image
Image from Google patent application

If this was April 1st I wouldn’t have given this story a second thought but it appears to be 100% legit. Google has received a patent this week for a “system for protecting a colliding object from a secondary impact, after an initial impact with a vehicle.” Let’s break that down a little bit. The “system” referred to is an adhesive layer on the front end of a vehicle that traps a “colliding object” to it upon impact. The “colliding object” referred to is a person. The logic behind the patent is that pedestrians sometimes incur additional injuries as they’re thrown onto the road or into another object – say a vehicle – after the initial impact. Will the tech appear on the Google car? We don’t yet know.

Google explains in the patent, “In the event of a collision between a vehicle and a pedestrian, injury to the pedestrian is often caused not only by the initial impact of the vehicle and the pedestrian, but also by the ensuing, secondary impact between the pedestrian and the road surface or other object.”

What happens if a self-driving car fails to recognize it just hit somebody and continues driving around town with its passenger fast asleep behind the “wheel”? Or what if a leg is trapped under the car while the torso and arms are stuck to the hood? I, for one, would prefer to take my chances rather than being trapped to the hood of the car that just hit me. But then again, who am I to question Google… it knows everything!

Fortunately, we have no related videos for this story so instead enjoy this all-new Mazda CX-9… its hood is not sticky.