I had an idea because the Czech Railways keep complaining that someone needs to develop a system that would detect cars and people on railroad crossings... I would call it TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoidance System (just like the one used in airplanes) ... someone already made one, and named it TCAS :-|

If it's an obviously good idea, make sure nobody else can see the obvious the same way you do. Otherwise they'll have tried something similar already. (If you're lucky they'll be ahead of their time and failed for some reason.)

You can still make them the new super-surveillance system the government wants to build.

Yeah is a common feature. A commodity even. It's also in them miniature train model stuff.
A make or buy investigation probably tells you buy that stuff.

I'd say publicly whip every idiot stuck on a railway crossing until the skin tears down in blood. And upload it to YT. Should solve the problem.

@Fast-Nop Except for all the backlash from people who wouldn't understand the point and would yell about "human rights violations." They might get the practice stopped too soon.

@powerfulparadox

I've literally given away ideas worth millions.

Why millions?

Well shit, because I say so.

Fact is ideas are worth pennies by themselves. Execution is ALL that matters.

True story, when I was 15-16, a full 3-4 years before the first patents appeared, I sent a bunch of car manufacturers the suggestion to add folding side mirrors.

What did it get me? A whole lot of nothing except the warming feeling in my gut that I may have been responsible for the idea eventually spreading.

Did lots of things like this. Used to think I was special (who doesn't at that age) but the older I get the more surprised I am at the *ocean* of ingenuity that surrounds us every day, coming from all sorts of ordinary people and all walks of life.

And supposing it's one of a kind, you have to watch out for vultures like sears, out to rip off small time inventors.

Invention is an obstacle that is not a mountain. Rather, it is a *mountain range*

If the advice I offered sounded like I intended it to be a general principle for everyone, I apologize. I was responding to OP as to what I would recommend for someone thinking like OP. In most cases, good ideas are never original, and can be surprisingly widespread (almost every major technology had multiple people working on it simultaneously, we just forget that out of a misplaced desire to give special honor to someone who got there "first"). As you said, most people are never going to do anything about them anyway.

i would name it F-OFF : Frequent Obstacle... and i'd come up with something sensible for the other two Fs just so it could have that acronym.