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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford

Traffic Lane Discharger  
  A device that electrically shocked vehicles whose drivers attempted to evade traffic control devices.  

Modern Marutis vied for lane space with imported cars and small delivery trucks. They kept to their lanes lest they encounter one of the millions of dischargers that had been placed in the city's sidewalks over the past fifty years. Prior to the installation of the dischargers, frustrated drivers had simply used the sidewalks to try and drive around traffic jams... Drive over one, and it would fry a vehicle's electrical system, simultaneously setting off an alarm. The immobilized driver could only wait for the traffic police to arrive, issue a fine on the spot, and impound the disabled vehicle.
Technovelgy from Sagramanda, by Alan Dean Foster.
Published by Pyr in 2006
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