Why I won’t patent my brilliant idea

In the past 30 years, I have driven about 8,000 miles in France in right-hand-drive cars. And I would be lying if I denied that one or two of those miles hadn’t been driven on the left-hand side of the road. This scared the life out of me. One second’s inattention elevated my risk of dying in a gruesome accident to levels previously experienced only by 1950s racing drivers or country and western singers.

Yet driving on the other side of the road is surprisingly easy — provided you start out on the other side of the road. The error occurs in the first minute of driving: setting off at dawn on an empty road, or when befuddled after stopping at a petrol station, where normal lane rules don’t apply.

Any idea is more likely to become widely adopted if many people can freely experiment with it

So could someone please make a device that plugs into a car’s cigarette lighter, and that chimes every time you start the engine to remind you to drive on the right (or left)? Such a device might cost a few pounds to manufacture and could sell for £20. It would also be easy to market, since the only places you’d need to sell them would be at ferry ports, Le Shuttle and airport car-rental firms.

Why don’t I patent this idea? For all I know, it may already be patented. But if not, I still don’t want to patent it myself, for both ethical and self-interested reasons. For one thing, I don’t want to present legal obstacles to the creation of a life-saving product. The other reason is more complex: any idea is more likely to become widely adopted if many people can freely experiment with its possibilities without being mired in legal restrictions.