Until somebody comes up with a car body material capable of repairing itself when dented by careless fellow motorists, surface damage to vehicles is going to remain a problem.
Today’s invention is one way to limit the pain caused by doors being opened into the sides of their neighbours in a carpark. Previous solutions have involved attaching lumps of high visibility rubber to the door edge. This is just too ugly, given the work that goes into the aesthetics of bodyshell design.
Instead, I propose a defence mechanism consisting of a discreetly modified door handle which, when the door is opened from inside, flips backwards to form a springy ‘wand’ which then prevents the door being bashed into any adjacent panels.
