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Glow-In-The-Dark Smart Highways Coming To the Netherlands In 2013
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.'"
but cautious corporate officials decided to wait for AOL Netscape's patent on the "blink" tag to expire.
It's often black ice that is invisible on the roads that causes slipping, rather than visibly obvious snow. That is probably what this targets. Snow is an obvious indicator that road is dangerous, and this paint fixes parts where you can't easily see that.
the game
If there's enough snow on the road to cover up the paint, I really hope that drivers don't need a snowflake graphic to know that there is snow on the roads.
http://xkcd.com/678/
High friction surface which requires constant work and they want to paint it in temperature sensitive markings which will get covered in sot and worn down in a heartbeat? Prolonging any and all road maintenance.
Why not just have a sign painted in the same material which does the same job, except you can actually see it a lot easier?
I do like the idea of glow in the dark roads for increased visibility, but not for reading the temperature.
the point is that these coatings respond to surface conditions, rather than just local area averages. great for bridges and other areas which freeze first
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What happens when a really dirty set of tires [..] network those highways [..] use the computer [..] smartphone ..
Relax, this is about Europe: most people there with cars actually already know how to drive them.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Our roads turn white to signal that it is snowing.
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.
Here in The Netherlands winter doesn't automatically means snow or temperatures below zero. So you can't see that roads are slippery. More often than not it's just below zero. The problem starts if it drizzled during the night and you only have ground frost. Then you get black ice. Which you don't see. Of course, if you walk towards your car you might know roads are slippery, but that doesn't guarantee that all roads are (or aren't) slippery.