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Futuristic Highway Will Glow In the Dark For Icy Conditions
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Will Oremus reports that a glow-in-the-dark highway will be installed in the Netherlands that will replace standard road markings with photoluminescent powder that charges in the daylight and glows through the night for up to 10 hours. But the new highway's most interesting feature is when the temperature drops below freezing, the road will automatically light up with snowflake indicators to warn drivers of icy conditions (video). 'One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave,' says designer Daan Roosegaarde. 'I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us.' The first few hundred meters of glow-in-the-dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Branbant 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. 'Research on smart transportation systems and smart roads has existed for over 30 years — call any transportation and infrastructure specialist and you'll find out yourself,' adds Emina Sendijarevick. 'What's lacking is the implementation of those innovations and making those innovations intuitive and valuable to the end-consumers — drivers.'"
I had gloves that did that back in the 1970's.
Glad to finally see a more practical use for this 50 year old technology.
How is this going to be more visible than the highly reflective paint that is already used?
Many cars already notify you if icy conditions are likely to exist, snowflakes seem redundant.
Neither will be very visible when covered with snow and ice.
Your car actually doesn't do this in a sufficient sense.
When a road surface is rainy or icy, braking and steering response suffer the most. Acceleration is impacted somewhat.
A common scenario here in North Dakota is that you set your cruise control and are moving along. Everything "feels fine". You go to change lanes or hit the brakes and you realize you are on a low-grip surface. If you know how to handle it you can sometimes make it ok. If you don't, you're in the ditch.
Your car can tell if a wheel starts to spin when under acceleration. But acceleration is the least impacted vehicle input in poor road conditions.
Your car can tell if the motion vector exceeds a certain threshhold and isn't lining up with the steering angle sensor (e.g. a slide is happening)
What your car cannot tell you is that the road conditions have degraded to the point that you need to slow down, and to what speed, to have proper turning and braking capability. All your car can do is respond to loss-of-grip situations that have already happened.
When I drive in unknown conditions I will frequently oscillate the steering wheel and feel how much resistance there is. Less resistance suggests less grip. I'll also ease on to the brake pedal to see if I can induce ABS, to help me understand where the braking limit is.
(Remember, this is north dakota, so there's no one else around for me to upset or scare when I do this stuff :))
I run snow tires on all my winter-driven vehicles. I cannot tell you the number of times I've been driving along the interstate, everything has been fine, and I come over a crest, and there are vehicles in the ditch everywhere. I provide test brake/steering inputs and there is _very little_ grip to be had. Anything other than the slightest/slowest input provokes loss-of-grip. And this is on proper snow tires. The people with bald all-seasons are in the ditch for a reason..
A current car simply can't detect that until you're already sliding/skidding/spinning tires. At which point, it may be too late for the car to recover on a low-grip surface.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
In the U.S. state of Virginia, Interstate 64 runs east–west through the middle of the state from West Virginia to the Hampton Roads region, a total of 298 miles (480 km). It is notable for crossing the mouth of the harbor of Hampton Roads on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, the first bridge-tunnel to incorporate man-made islands. Also noteworthy is a section through Rockfish Gap, a wind gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which was equipped with an innovative system of airport-style runway lighting embedded into the pavement to aid motorists during periods of poor visibility due to fog or other conditions.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_64_in_Virginia
A lighting system within the pavement to help designate lanes automatically activated by fog sensors was installed by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to improve safety during such weather conditions.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockfish_Gap
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
What potential health impacts?
This is not ionizing, nor are you going to generate a lethal current in a human body. Go away nutter.
1. The wind powered lights will require power lines for backup for when the wind isn't enough. You could add batteries into the mix but you will have still need the power lines and then have to maintain the batteries.
2. The glow in the dark road markings will wear off. Is the safe for the eviroment?
3.The glow in the dark road markings will be more expensive than the paint we use now. BTW current paint reflect a lot of light. Since cars have lights why make the roads markings glow?
4. Inductive charging roads? How much copper will that take?
All that money would be better spent on making sure all roads have reflective markings and maybe an AM radio based system of road condition warnings, digital data of course.
I have become convinced people come up with engineering scams. You come up with some really cool sounding or looking idea that has a lot of issues and extremely high costs. You then make nice presentations, you then get people saying, "this is cool", and then you get money to study the "problems" and build nothing or a small useless test system. Kind of like a cool picture of a bridge that had windmills under the roadway. It would have been expensive, a bad bridge, and a bad windmill.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
While this might hold true in the USA, it is not universal.
This is why Americans should travel more. For one I think all Americans should try driving on some nice German roads. Maybe we could start building them here.
Surely not. In such conditions they will neither collect enough light nor shine *that* brightly. Then again, you don't need an indicator to tell you it's cold when there is snow on the road. In Netherlands the problem is usually with temperatures that keep jumping up and down just over and under melting/freezing temperature, sometimes making roads treacherous. Winter temperatures here are a bit higher than in northern Finland of course.
As for the lanes, it's an improvement over normal paint... but nothing magic.
I live in Wisconsin. We have a nickname for anyone whose car goes in the ditch on the highway during a big snowstorm: morons. It's always some piece of crap minivan or Saturn Ion or Pontiac of some sort. The driver is always in a hurry or forgot that 4 wheel drive doesn't do anything for stopping and tada, ditch. Last major snowstorm there was approx 1 car in the ditch every 1.5 miles. No amount of sparkly snowflakes on the road will keep people that stupid from driving that stupidly, trust me. They're just idiots who will never learn their lesson. They're all Wisconsin plates too so don't go thinking it's someone from Texas or something who's never seen snow because those people are smart enough to stay home.
This idea would be a giant waste of time and money and not benefit anyone.
Some governments consider roads as critical for their competitive position. Without a good road-network, the Netherlands would loose their position as transport country and the work generated by the Rotterdam Harbor would dry up.
Accidents cause road-blocks which cause traffic jams. Hundreds of people in traffic jams idling costs enormous amounts of lost productivity and is bad for GDP.
With a social system ensuring everybody for health-case and a decent life standard when not able to work, avoiding accidents becomes an economical question.
I'm not stating the government does take all this into account, but at least the importance of a good and safe road-network for the whole country is understood.
Note, roads are not only there for those driving a car. Even if you do your groceries walking, ask yourself how your food ended up at the store. Ask yourself how the Ambulance managed to come to you when you need it.
We could build German roads in the U.S. but the cost to then ship those roads to Germany would be prohibitive.
YMMV
No brain, no pain.
Well, if you want the same kind of roads, just vote the guy into office who promises to build you those roads like they did in Germany.
(what? Too soon? And yes, he was elected.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.