The Fish Tales restaurant in Ocean City, Maryland is experimenting with these bumper tables for observing social distancing:
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The tables were designed and produced by Baltimore-based Revolution Event Design and Production. Here’s footage of them delivering the tables, where you can see their wheelbase was designed to fit an unloading ramp:
The bumpers themselves are tractor tire inner tubes. In the footage below, you can see that they do their job well enough:
However, watching how people navigate from within these things…
…brings up two design suggestions I’d make. The first is to put bigger wheels on them so they don’t hang up on the boardwalk surface. The second would be to make the table surface transparent. I know plexi would scuff quickly, but it’s got to be unnerving to move around without being able to see your feet or the ground in front of you.
It’s worth nothing that the restaurant has not yet re-opened (it’s still takeout and delivery only), and the people you see in the videos are all staff. They’re still in the testing phases. According to NPR, “[Fish Tales co-owner Shawn] Harman said he can wait until it’s considered safe to introduce the novel attraction to customers.
“‘We don’t wanna go too fast and go backward,’ he said. ‘Any way you look at it, that’s foolish and more expensive than taking your time and doing it one time.'”
Source: core77