Intelligent Road Studs

Copley writes "The BBC have a short story about 'intelligent' cat's eyes (reflective road studs). I remember reading about the principle of these years ago. It seems that they've reached the real-world trial stage. The whole concept is pretty cool - the studs monitor weather and traffic speeds and change their colour accordingly. As you drive along, rather than see your own headlights reflected, you see a line of active lights indicating what you can expect ahead of you: stationary traffic, ice, etc. As I recall, one idea proposed was for your own car to leave a trail of lights behind it, the length of which related to your speed. The trail thus indicated the 'danger-you-are-too-close-you-moron' zone behind you. Drivers could then avoid driving within another car's trail. Neat idea, but I somehow doubt even the most technical of safety systems is ever going to change the driving habits of some of the brain-dead, tail-gating idiots I often have to share the roads with... Perhaps intelligent road studs with assault weaponry to take out bad drivers would be more useful!"

Comments

Following distance? We don't need no stinking foll

[Rick the Red]

Drivers could then avoid driving within another car's trail.

Pretty much everywhere I've driven in North America if you "avoid driving in another's trail" you'll have two or three cars pull in between you and that other car. If you then slow down for them it will happen again; iterate until you're pretty much standing still and everyone else is passing you on both sides. You'll be lucky if they just honk and wave their middle finger.

Re:Trail of lights

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the difficulty of driving properly is not the cause of tailgating. There's two kinds of tailgaters, aggressive and ignorant. Ignorant tailgaters scare me the most. I can yield to an aggressive one and since I try my best to yield to faster traffic, that's not a problem for me. Ignorant tailgaters will follow people for miles without even trying to pass. I've been forced to change lanes (left), hit my brakes, and pull back into the right lane. That's after passing half a dozen exits, flashing my brakes, and changing speed.

The lights might help the ignorant ones, but I doubt it. My best friend's wife tailgates. If there is a car in front of her, she's always under 1/2 car length behind. The speed doesn't matter. I was riding shotgun and a guy in front of her drove on the shoulder to splash her with mud. When he did it the second time, she said, "He's doing that intentionally!" I said, "Maybe he doesn't like being tailgated." "Oh, that's not it," was all she said. Later, she totaled her car in the rain. She ran into the car in front of her. To her, it was their fault for stopping too fast. She still drive the same.

Would these lights make a difference? Probably for a few drivers. Enforcement would help, but on freeways I only see speeding enforced. I've seen people driving so close to a cop car, they are under two seconds behind the car in front to the cop. Yes, he's tailgating too.

Uhm. . .
Rant off!