Prevent Car Accidents with the Bubble Rubber Bumper Buggy

If you believe that we hold within ourselves all of the answers to life's mysteries, I invite you to delve into the mind of my daughter, Lindsey, who has come up with a remedy to one of life's problems – a way to prevent car crashes.

Of every possible solution to the problem of auto crash prevention, I think she has come up with one of the most innovative and obvious answers to the problem – bumper cars.

I'm not talking about the supposedly street-legal bumper cars (yes they have them and you can find them at jalopnik.com) – I'm talking about old fashioned bumper cars – the fun crash-into-other-cars vehicles. But maybe a little bigger and maybe with an engine that runs on air. Oh, and with air conditioning and heat too.

After examining all of the positive aspects of using bumper cars, the only downside I can see is shopping, especially regarding food shopping – so I'm hoping somebody will construct a see-through bubble bumper top over the bumper car to prevent groceries from becoming tossed salads prior to getting home.

Imagine how different our lives would be without auto accidents! Daily commutes would be fun. We could exercise our stress release mechanism by crashing into the guy next to us over and over and over again until we've released pent-up stress from days, weeks, months, and even years before as we bang ourselves into a stress-free existence.

I can even see the commercial for it...

Announcer: The best stress relief program on the planet – bump your way to a stress-free commute with the Bubble Rubber Bumper Buggy (do not confuse with rubber baby buggy bumpers)!

Imagine driving your very own bumper car. Spin around in circles and bounce off the walls as you maneuver your way through traffic. Wheeee... Doesn't that sound like fun?

With bumper cars, we could actually enjoy what used to be mind-numbing exercises in patience. Remember when we sat in hour-long traffic jams, slamming our fists into our horns and cursing out stupid drivers who cut us off? Now we can use our cell phones without having to worry about causing crashes, because the whole point of riding in bumper cars is to crash into other vehicles without causing accidents.

And riding bumper cars would challenge us to make it into work before the boss got there. We could make a game out of it. Of course, lots of bosses never make it into work in the first place, because they're playing golf, so this game might be unnecessary. But it would be fun to try.

Or, we could stay on the road and work from our laptops.

Another benefit is the exercise we would gain as we stretched our muscles in an attempt to remain in our seats – much like that of people who use the Hawaiian chair shown on the Ellen Degeneres Show. (If you haven't seen it yet, watch the clip – you'll have to watch a commercial first, but it's worth it.)

Of course, construction workers would need to place bumper guards on the sides of the roads, but they would be safe, because bumper pads would surround their construction sites.

Naturally we would have to allow for police, fire, and medical vehicles, so we would have to construct special roads for them, possibly elevated above the bumpercar roads, allowing quick access to hospitals and government offices. But what's another couple of millions of dollars in taxes?

Two other problems Lindsey didn't yet address – getting to the airport on time and truckers jackknifing around us.

With the exception of those two problems, I think bumper cars are a great idea. Maybe, before actually purchasing them, we could use our existing vehicles by attaching different colors of bubbled rubber to the sides, front, and backs, colors like pineapple, peach, banana, caramel, chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla (I must be hungry – sorry).

I will leave you now to enjoy something edible as I ponder the solutions to the problems raised in this blog.

Disclaimer: my daughter and I come from a long line of inventive imaginative minds, the brains of which are sitting in examination jars held by scientists trying to research the link between creativity and delirium.

(Bumper car was borrowed from wikimedia.)