A Russian expatriate inventor has patented a car that automatically weighs you when you sit in it — and yells at you if you’re getting fat. As the New York Times reports:

“The best way to ensure people have information about their weight and they don’t forget is to create a system that does it by itself and they don’t have to think about,” Mr. [Yefim] Kriger said. “This system weighs you and collects the data and gives you trends of what will happen with your weight in three months or three years.”

Patent #6,649,848 — entitled “Vehicle with on-board dieters’ weight progress indentifying and control system and method” — is online here. While reading it over, I noticed that Kriger has helpfully designed the system so that it won’t function during “hard traffic” — i.e. moments when the car is moving faster than 10 miles an hour. That’s to prevent you from accidentally mowing down a pensioner while distracted by your car sniping about the Atkins diet.