Google Patents Self-Driving Car That Glues Pedestrians To The Hood In A Crash (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Google just got a patent for a special kind of coating on self-driving cars that could help prevent pedestrian injuries. The company wants to coat autonomous vehicles with a sticky substance so that if they hit a pedestrian, the person would be glued to the car instead of flying off. "[The pedestrian] is not thrown from the vehicle, thereby preventing a secondary impact between the pedestrian and the road surface or other object," says the patent, granted on Tuesday. Google explains that an "adhesive layer" would be placed on the hood, front bumper and front side panels of a car. A thin coating would protect it until an impact occurred. Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles.

Comments

Wrong Google Story (Off Topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

What we should be discussing is why they have Yuri Kochiyama as today's google doodle with a whitewashed description of what she stood for. Apparently idolizing Mao and Osama Bin Laden is somehow important to google.

Re:Or they could be pinned

[BigDukeSix]

Pedestrians either get hit in the street or parking lot, or they get pinned against the wall of a garage (where else are the cars?). In the latter case, the crush injury happens irrespective of the presence of the adhesive layer. We should consider edge cases, but this is a bona fide genius idea. Add a dispersive gel layer underneath the adhesive and this might make a real difference.

Disclaimer: I am a trauma surgeon, and do crash reconstruction work on the side.