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.'"
This technology would've been introduced long ago (Score:4, Funny)
but cautious corporate officials decided to wait for AOL Netscape's patent on the "blink" tag to expire.
So... (Score:4, Funny)
How will drivers see glow in the dark images when there is snow on the roads?
We already have this here. (Score:5, Funny)
Our roads turn white to signal that it is snowing.
Re:Dutch dykes (Score:2, Funny)
If you'd written "dike" instead of "dyke", maybe your joke would have been amusingly relevant instead of offensive.
If you're really that easily offended .. what the hell are you DOING on the internet?!
Re:Dirt Proof? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The War On Common Sense (Score:3, Funny)
I drive in "winter conditions" 5-7 months every year...
So you're familiar with it. This kind of system would be entirely appropriate for somewhere that gets frozen-road conditions only a few days of the year, or areas that experience high amounts of traffic from out-of-towners.
This is for the visitors - the kind of idiot who follows his GPS into a lake - not the locals.
Re:The War On Common Sense (Score:4, Funny)
The first few hundred meters of glow in the dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Brabant in mid-2013
They do realize .. you had to be outside to either get in the car or at least to pull out of the garage, right? Might notice things like "shit it's below freezing" or "shit it's snowy, roads might be slick". Just sayin'.
I don't know if you've ever driving in winter conditions... but you do realize that road surface temperature differs from air temperature, and varies over time and distance? It might be 5 degrees when you leave your office, but by the time you reach your home outside of the city, it may have dropped to below freezing.
I'm one of those weird guys who believes in fixing a problem at the source of the problem.
Anyone who doesn't understand that and think it's bleedin' obvious is not qualified to drive a car and should never receive a license until they get a clue.
Unlike this proposal, it would SAVE money, not cost money.
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.