Hasta La Ideas

As every couple that shares a bed knows, there is an imaginary 50-yard-line down the middle of that bed, and both parties can get a good night’s sleep if there are no advances or losses in territory. When one partner crosses that DMZ, unconsciously thrashing about in the throes of a spicy-Thai-food-driven nightmare, they’re literally in for a rude awakening.

Admittedly it’s not the world’s most pressing problem. But Ford’s designers and engineers had a bit of fun with the phenomenon by devising the “Lane-Keeping Bed,” which uses the same lane-keeping sensors that are in their cars to monitor when one sleeper has crossed into another’s “lane.” Then a conveyor-belt-like surface corrects the situation:

Of course, technically speaking the system doesn’t actually separate the partners; following the bed-correction, the one whose space has been intruded upon must still retreat, it’s just that they now have more space to retreat to. But hey, we don’t see GM, Toyota or Honda doing anything about this.