Car Traps Part 1: The Web

It would be nice to stop a speeding cat in it’s tracks, wouldn’t it? No more highway police chases or street racing. It would make for a terrible action film, I will admit that! But for places where speeding has become problematic, I will offer a few solutions.

For this particular car trap, I propose a series of rubber rails which would be hydraulically lifted from the road, grabbing the belly of the car and elevating the tires from the road. The car would then grind to a halt.

There would be several rails evenly spaced out, to ensure a few of them would find purchase under the car. The rails would be narrow to prevent wheels from riding on top of them (at least not for very long). EDIT: I should have made the rails a bit ‘wavy’ to prevent the tires from traversing them.

For this system to truly work, and to prevent ‘innocent’ cars from being ensnared, you would need to partition all the lanes (like you’d find at a toll booth station), and have a trap placed in each.

This system is in no way perfect. It will shred up the car’s underside something fierce. The car may also sink to one side in the case it is off-center to the rails. This is not a means to catch motorcyclists or large commercial vehicles. The rails may require replacement or maintenance after each catch.

Would this work as a deterrent? I’d like to think so. Probably to the point of allowing cities/police to install a few fake ones to save money.