Tech giant Google has registered a patent for an ingenious idea meant to prevent further injuries sustained by pedestrians involved in car accidents – by sticking them to the car.

The patent, given to the tech company on Tuesday, described a way to prevent or reduce injuries that pedestrians might sustain with self-driving cars. Once a car bumps a pedestrian, an adhesive material will allow the pedestrian to stick to the bonnet and prevent him or her from being thrown away when the car stops.

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Of course, leaving the sticky material exposed will soon fill it with various things, like leaves and bugs. Google plans to prevent that from happening by covering the adhesive material with a protective shell that will only break upon impact. Once a pedestrian gets hit, the impact will break the shell and expose the adhesive to do what it is meant to do.

While the idea sounds unusual, Google envisions that it will help prevent further injury. The patent states that many injuries pedestrians sustain from car accidents are not caused by the initial collision itself, but rather from the pedestrian being thrown off the car and onto the ground.

Bill Visnic, editorial director of mobility media at the Society of Automotive Engineers, told the Washington Post that although the idea of a “car flypaper” sounds “wacky,” it just might help. Visnic notes that some car inventions seemed like a crazy idea at first, but prove to be valuable in the long run.

In the patent, Google acknowledged that self-driving cars are not yet perfected and that they still might hit pedestrians. Until Google gets to the point of perfectly avoiding all sorts of collisions, the company is hoping to prevent accidents from happening and to lessen their effects if ever they do happen.

TagsGoogle, Google Car, flypaper, car flypaper, car crash, car accident