No-one looks forward to driving on South African roads. Not only are they the eighth most dangerous bits of tarmac in the world (Iraq is a safer place to commute), they’re also among the most lonely – the average car in Gauteng has just 1.2 occupants. We’re just not very good at ride sharing.

Communication with other drivers is, of course, pretty much limited to hand gestures or angry horn usage. A sorry indictment of our way of living to be sure. How much better would it be to be able to let other drivers know that you’re really sorry you cut them off? Maybe you’d even like a better way of saying ‘thank you’ to courteous drivers than the ubiquitous and sometimes confusing use of hazard lights too?

US firm Motormood certainly thinks so. It’s about to start a Kickstarter campaign for a small display you put into your rear view window that will light up a happy or apologetic face to let the driver behind you know how you feel. Sadly, at the moment, there’s no plans for negative emotions to display disappointment with someone’s behaviour.

I’m holding out until someone programs the entire gamut of World of Warcraft emotes into an avatar-based display system. Of particular importance are ‘/frown’, ‘/boggle’, ‘/confused’, ‘/cringe’ and my personal favourite ‘/golfclap’.

See below.