I've been playing a fair amount of Carmageddon lately. That's a computer game where the goal is nominally to win a race against several other cars. In reality, the game isn't played that way. Instead, the actual goal is to inflict massive amounts of damage on the other cars and hapless pedestrians, both of which earn you money, extended play time, and eventually the victory in the race. Once all of your opponents are destroyed, you of course win by default.
It seems dangerous to drive an actual car after several hours of playing this game. By the way, Carmageddon has been banned in several countries because of excessive violence, but I'd say that the gradual erosion of safe driving habits is potentially a far better reason to ban it.
The other game I have been dabbling with lately is Interstate '76. In this game, set in an alternate time line in which the highways are ruled by vigilantes, your car is bedecked with various machine guns, missiles, and other implements of destruction. Sure, the story is that you are ridding the highways of bad guy thugs, but we all know the real reason for the game is to watch the pretty explosions.
Both of these games point out something that Allison and I have discussed many a time while sitting in a traffic jam or after being cut off by some idiotic lane changing jerk. The problem with today's car mounted weaponry is that you still have to dodge the debris. What good does it do you to destroy the slow car in front of you with your roof mounted bazooka if you have to drive around the flaming wreckage? That consumes valuable time that could be better spent getting to your destination more quickly.
The ideal weapon would totally vaporize the offending vehicle. I'm thinking that a high powered laser that scans very quickly over the entire car many thousand times per second would do the trick. I don't know what driving through a cloud of metal vapor would do to my car and its occupants, but I'd sure like to try it.
Alternatively, a hyperkinetic weapon, like a rail gun, which spits out projectiles at multiple kilometers/second, might serve as well. The vast momentum of the shell would carry the target vehicle forward, giving that all-important extra split second in which to dodge around the pulverized and probably incinerated remains of the road-hogging vehicle.
Ah, it's nice to dream. For now, we'll have to settle for seething quietly at the incompetent masses, with a liberal helping of below-the-dash flip-offs. After all, we wouldn't want to get anybody angry at us - there are a lot of kooks out there.
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Gentlemen, start your rants.