The modern Moron Gun

Back when I was learn­ing to drive, my friends and I de­cided we wanted a “mor­on gun”. Some doo­fus in an­oth­er car turns in front of you with no warn­ing? Shoot them with the mor­on gun! SPLAT. Big splotch of or­ange paint on their car!! An­oth­er idi­ot runs a red light and al­most creams you? Tell the world this guy is a mor­on - BLAT. Neon or­ange paint blob all over their left side!

Some­body al­most side-swipes you, or brakes with no warn­ing, or backs out of a drive­way without look­ing, or pulls a U-turn in a stu­pid place? Mor­on Gun to the res­cue – bright or­ange splat says “Mor­on On Board”!

The mor­on gun idea served three really im­port­ant pur­poses. First, it let the driver in ques­tion know that they had just been a total idi­ot. Second, it let every­one else know, with that huge Day-Glo or­ange splot, that the driver of the car was to be avoided. And fi­nally, most im­port­antly, it was just really sat­is­fy­ing.

I’ll bet this thing has been wished for a mil­lion times around the plan­et by now.

Of course, while we thought briefly about mak­ing a mor­on gun, we nev­er ac­tu­ally did it. Some com­bin­a­tion of a wrist rock­et (a sling shot) and wa­ter bal­loons loaded up with or­ange paint might have worked… but, it was really im­prac­tic­al…. we might miss the car, in­stead cov­er­ing a ped­es­tri­an or a sign post with paint. People might just de­cide to fire back with their own mor­on guns, and then how could you trust or­ange splotches to in­dic­ate true mor­ons? It was prob­ably il­leg­al, and cer­tainly not even re­motely safe.

So my bud­dies and I drove around town, mak­ing double-barreled shot­gun mo­tions at cars when they were stu­pid, shout­ing “MOR­ON!!” Turns out that was pretty sat­is­fy­ing too.

To this day, I still do it. My kids have picked up the be­ha­vi­or. If some­body does some­thing mor­on­ic on the road in front of us while we’re driv­ing around, you might hear three or four of us all shout “mor­on!” while pre­tend­ing to be Clint East­wood or the Ter­min­at­or. New Eng­land drivers keep us pretty busy.

So…. Why do I men­tion this? Well, it’s a tech thing (and de­cidedly not a Dis­cov­ery thing).

While driv­ing a big RV for end­less miles on va­ca­tion not too long ago, I had plenty of time to con­tem­plate idi­ot­ic be­ha­vi­or on the road. I real­ized that today’s tech­no­logy may provide an ac­tu­ally im­ple­ment­able ver­sion of the mor­on gun, one that may re­duce ac­ci­dents and save lives. Or, at the least, provide massive en­ter­tain­ment.

Take these tech­no­lo­gies, mix, and serve: autonom­ous vehicles, sensor net­works, loc­a­tion sys­tems, crowd sourcing, so­cial net­work­ing, cloud-sup­ple­men­ted AI, voice-re­cog­ni­tion, heads-up dis­plays and aug­men­ted real­ity.

Digital Moron Gun in Action

Here’s a dia­log for how it might play out on the road.

“Sam” is the car.

Sam: [Bing!] Ex­cuse me, sir - one of your alert thresholds has been triggered. There’s a car ap­proach­ing, about a half-mile be­hind you on the high­way, mov­ing at 80 miles per hour, with a mor­on score of 50.

Me: Thanks Sam… flag car as “watch” and keep me pos­ted.

[…]

Sam: [Bing!] The car on watch has changed lanes three times since the last up­date, ac­cel­er­ated, and has ad­vanced to 75 un­con­tested mor­on points.

Me: Good grief. Sounds like a teen-ager in a Chevette…. mov­ing to the far right lane.

Sam: The car is now in your rear-view mir­ror sir. I’m high­light­ing in red.

Me: Ok, steady ahead. Yow! That idi­ot al­most hit us as he blew by! Give that guy 20 mor­on points!

Sam: Tag­ging.

[…]

Me: Sam - this pickup truck that’s mer­ging onto the high­way now, what’s its score?

Sam: 0 today, but a baseline of 25 for the last week.

Me: See that mat­tress flop­ping around in the back? That thing could fly out on the road at any point.

Sam: I re­com­mend adding 10 to the mor­on score to alert oth­er drivers.

Me: Do it.

Sam: We’ve been flagged back with 10 points from the driver of the pickup.

Me: Any reas­on?

Sam: None giv­en - adding stand­ard “re­tali­ation clause” com­ment. Our con­tinu­ous sub-20 av­er­age is noted in our on­line pro­file.

[…]

Sam: [Bing!] Mor­on ahead, hog­ging the left lane. Auto-tag­ging with dif­fer­ence between cul­tur­al speed lim­it and ac­tu­al ground speed. 20 points.

Me: Maybe they’ll fig­ure it out and scoot over.

Sam: Un­likely; their score is over 250, all for sit­ting in the left lane. Do you want me to in­tra-car mes­sage them telling them to get the $@&! out of the left lane?

Me: Nah. They’re prob­ably someone’s grandad… don’t want to freak them out. Just avoid them.

[…]

Me: Sam, we’re near­ing the Fresh Pond traffic circle, and Cam­bridge is loaded with stu­dents new to town. Please re­view the stand­ard set­tings for high-mor­on-dens­ity re­gions.

Sam: These are the set­tings.

  • All vehicles in visu­al range aug­men­ted with cur­rent mor­on score on wind­shield and mir­rors.
  • High level mor­ons out­lined on the wind­shield in red, me­di­um in yel­low.
  • Aud­ible no­ti­fic­a­tion for er­rat­ic lane changes and speed changes.
  • Auto­pi­lot takeover if vehicles of more than 3 met­ric tons and 50 mor­on points are with­in 4 car lengths and mov­ing at great­er than 25mph.
  • Tag any­one with 10 points for hes­it­a­tion, 5 points for jump­ing in­to the circle without right-of-way.
  • ‘Like’ any­one who sig­nals to exit the circle at speed, and all cyc­lists bold enough to ride the circle.

Me: Ex­cel­lent… en­gage.

[…]

Me: Whoa! Sam, did you see that ped­es­tri­an jump out in­to the road from in front of that bus?

Sam: Yes sir. What a mor­on.

Me: Tag him with 10 points.

Sam: I am un­able to tag non-vehicu­lar ob­jects on the cur­rent ver­sion of Drive­N­et.

Me: Oh, that’s right. Ini­ti­ate hu­man-based mor­on tag­ging mech­an­ism, please.

Sam: En­ga­ging the roof-moun­ted or­ange-paint-bal­loon can­non and pre­par­ing to splat­ter the of­fend­ing ped­es­tri­an.

Me: Launch.