A shopping fantasy

This morning I thought of a splendid market opportunity for Wanzl, the big trolley manufacturers, for whom see reference 1. They could put together a consortium involving, say, Google and BT, to put together something along the following lines.

You build a trolley with a large red light mounted on the handle bar. A red light which can be made to flash, to draw shoppers' attention to a trolley which is doing wrong, to embarrass the shopper responsible, a usually peace loving and law abiding housewife.

Then there is a small computer in the base of the lamp which is in touch both with the shop's central computer, with telephone people and with the satnav people. The central computer knows all about exactly where all the trolleys are - to the nearest tenth of a metre or so - and all about who is pushing them. Perhaps the trolleys are also in touch with each other, this perhaps amounting to a less centralised and more robust solution. Perhaps there are also links to the Disclosure & Barring Service, formerly the Criminal Records Bureau.

Then there are loudspeakers, aka Tannoys, mounted at regular intervals in the shop's roof space.

Then when the central computer detects some social distancing violation, the red light and the nearest loudspeaker to spring into loud and bossy life. Telling everybody in range that such and such a trolley is breaking the laws about social distancing. The usually law abiding housewife concerned goes rather pink and scuttles off with her trolley to hide somewhere while all the fuss dies down. Perhaps behind all the piles of Easter Eggs which no-one wants to buy any more.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/trolleys-228a-and-228b.html.