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Airline passenger anti-knee-crush device

Stops cattle-class knee injury from inconsiderate forward passengers.
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A sturdy telescoping rod that locks at a specified length. During taxi and takeoff, you extend it between your seat and the back of the seat in front of you, and lock it, thereby preventing the seat from being reclined and crushing your knees. Advanced versions: spring loaded, thus allowing a user-specified amount of reclining to avoid detection, and a stealth version disguised as an umbrella.
rmutt, Apr 06 2001

Knee defender http://www.kneedefe...om/html2/how_to.htm
Gadget with similar purpose [rmutt, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

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       <rant> "Inconsiderate" doesn't begin to describe it. I am blessed with a sufficiently efficient body design that I am never victimized by a reclining seat in front of me. But I have been utterly amazed at the number of incidents I've witnessed where a tall rearward passenger politely complains to an offending forward seat-recliner, and receives a response like, "Tough luck, buddy. This is my seat and it's my right to lean back in it." As if the comfort of leaning back a bit is worth inflicting serious discomfort or even pain on someone else! As if you can lean back enough in economy class to even notice the difference! As if the whole planeful of people who overhear your boorish response don't think of you as a major league jerk! What kind of pigs are we becoming? (my apologies to pigs, who do not deserve the preceding unfair comparison)</rant>   

       Actually, rmutt, I don't agree with most of the ideas on HB that propose a way to "force someone who irritates me to behave like I want them to, or at least punish them mercilessly," but I do sympathize with your motivation.
beauxeault, Apr 06 2001
  

       Well, in my defense, I posted it to HB instead of actually making one. Also note that, unlike many other HB ideas, it doesn't explode.
It's not coercive so much as fixing a design flaw: those seats were obviously not intended to be installed so close together. Now if there were only some ingenious way to punish greedhead airline execs...
rmutt, Apr 06 2001, last modified Apr 11 2001
  

       Right. I didn't mean any real criticism to you, rmutt. In fact, I could even imagine your device as a friendly way to prevent a *considerate* forward passenger from *unintentionally* wounding someone behind him/her.
beauxeault, Apr 06 2001
  

       Here's what I do if I'm flying coach in that 'boorish response' circumstance... play with tray on back of offending seat... lean over and breathe out loud and/or belch and/or comment on what they're reading, etc..
thumbwax, Apr 07 2001
  

       for the more notorious recliners, make the seat end pointy. and, oh yes, it should explode.
nick_n_uit, Apr 07 2001
  

       Incorporate a control sensor on the back of the seat. It stops or readjusts the recline when it 'just' touches the knees. Or delivers increasing current through the reclinee until knee contact is broken, or offender's teeth pop out.   

       Or injects explosive-tipped spikes into their butt.
thantox, Apr 07 2001
  

       Being as tall as I am, I have the same problem...for that reason and for more legroom for myself, I usually ask for either the emergency exit row or the bulkhead row. You're asked to help fellow passengers in case of a problem, and most people who want the row for the space are big enough to do so...Open the door, shout 'This way out!' and leg it...
StarChaser, Apr 07 2001
  

       I once gave an obnoxious British guy a 18 hour rollercoaster ride with my knees on a long haul flight to Australia. I wouldn't mind, but he had the bulkhead seat. He eventually asked if there was a problem, and I told him I had no room, to which he replied "Well we're all in the same boat". I looked over his shoulder at his feet stretched out and propped against the wall and said "You seem to be doing OK". What I wouldn't have given to send 200 Volts through the stick he apparently had stuck up his ass.
mikeface, May 07 2001
  

       http://www.kneedefender.com/   

       How is this sufficiently different?
ivanhoe, Oct 05 2004
  


 

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