Glow-In-The-Dark Smart Highways Coming To the Netherlands In 2013 167
An anonymous reader writes "The Netherlands is moving forward with plans to build 'smart' highways that can become more easily visible in the dark or communicate weather conditions to drivers. Work will begin as early as next year. 'Special paint will also be used to paint markers like snowflakes across the road's surface — when temperatures fall to a certain point, these images will become visible, indicating that the surface will likely be slippery. Roosegaarde says this technology has been around for years, on things like baby food — the studio has just up-scaled it. The first few hundred meters of glow in the dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Brabant in mid-2013, followed by priority induction lanes for electric vehicles, interactive lights that switch on as cars pass and wind-powered lights within the next five years.'"
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Inductive lanes? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The War On Common Sense (Score:0, Informative)
How do you know it would SAVE money to not have freeze warning indicators painted on the roads? They didn't give any price for the indicators in the article, nor did they give any estimate of how many accidents it could prevent.
If it costs $1000/mile to paint the indicators on the roads, and prevents one $10,000 accident per 10 miles, then it would break even.
I don't know about the drivers in the Netherlands, but I can say with some certainty that many of the licensed drivers in the USA indeed do not have a clue. This is especially evident when driving to the mountains on ski weekends and seeing the reckless driving and accidents from out-of-area drivers that really have no clue about how to drive safely in winter conditions since they only drive in snow 3 weekends a year in a rented SUV. I think drivers like this would definitely benefit from freeze warning indicators.
The new Dutch government has basically agreed to raise taxes on homeowners and parents [dutchnews.nl] and to raise (mandatory) healthcare costs [dutchnews.nl] as much as 800%. But it's good to know that there is enough money to put glow-in-the-dark paint on the roads because I'm sure that was the first thing on the minds of Dutch voters!
As for Dutch motorists, the license requirements are stricter than the US, the driving age is higher, the roads are completely flat, the freeways are basically at a standstill during rush hour, and it rains every five minutes, so people are pretty used to inclement weather.