A bunch of wonderfully insane clever quirky chaps in Japan have come up with a solution to all our road traffic accident problems. The one where we regularly kill off the population of a small town every year through bad, unlucky or plain stupid driving mistakes. They’ve decided to ignore the high tech solutions like self-driving or radar equipped vehicles and instead have gone for the most basic, obvious solution of all. Genius or madmen?

The iSave Electric Car (also known as the Flying Pillow) is a 3 seater electric vehicle which can cover up to 30 km on a single charge and be recharged from your home sockets just like a toaster. Oh the stuff round the outside? Glad you asked. That’s a padding made of sponge and fabric which is absorb the shock of any impact.

As we can see from the above video, the developers clearly expect that most impacts will occur at around 2 mph, and all the parties involved will be laughing heartily as they happen. Which to us proves that this concept is indeed spot on, and will revolutionize the transport industry in ways we could never imagine.

We are also extremely impressed with the ergonomics of this craft, as it’s clear it will be able to take full advantage of extremely low wind resistance to maximize range, speed and occupant comfort over long distances. We only wish that more enterprising companies would invest their research money in Flying Pillows like this, because the world would be a much safer place.

Apparently the car will retail for around $9000 when it finally hits the streets…softly.