First Glow-In-the-Dark Road Debuts In Netherlands

An anonymous reader writes "A 500 meter (0.3 mile) stretch of road in the Netherlands has opened without the standard crop of streetlights lining its perimeter. The streetlights are believed to be unnecessary since the road markings were painted on with a mix of photo-luminescent powder, which absorbs sunlight during the day and radiates a portion of that energy back at night. Whether the modified road paint can withstand harsh weather or even provide sufficient lighting given insufficient exposure to sunlight during the day remains to be seen. The project was orchestrated by Studio Roosegaarde, which in the future plans to implement weather-sensitive road markings that would inform drivers when outside temperatures drop or rise above certain levels."

Comments

waitwhat

[Johann Lau]

I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us.

You took too much, man...

Useless

[PPH]

We already have retroreflective paints. Road markings and signs illuminated by headlights are clearly visible. On the other hand, some things (like animals and pedestrians) require some means of illumination at night. Streetlights are OK, but headlights are better. An animal or other obstruction will only appear as a shadow against a glowing roadway.

Re:Useless

[Travis Mansbridge]

Yes, but today we are talking about driving.

Re:Useless

[FalcDot]

I believe that what he meant is that drivers "require some means of illumination at night" in order to spot "some things (like animals and pedestrians)" so that they don't run them over.

Re:Useless

[hankwang]

"you can walk around outdoors without electric lights even when there's no moon."

I doubt that you can do that comfortably if there are trees blocking the little star light that's available or if it's a bad road surface combined with you not wearing rugged boots.

Apart from that, especially women don't feel comfortable going around in dark places where they perceive that there can be rapists hiding in the dark.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Reflective paints are fine if you're driving at very moderate speeds. If you're driving with higher speeds on a long stretch of highway with oncoming traffic that potentially blinds you and doesn't allow you to use your high beam, it really helps if you can see the road stretch out in front of you and not just the short stretch illuminated by your low beam. It also builds confidence that you're not missing an unexpected turn and end up besides the road. Confidence is very important in safe driving, people that are not confident about their current situation on the road tend to do all kinds of unexpected maneuvers that can end badly.

Of course, there are roadside reflectors that could do roughly the same job, but their usage is often very inconsistent and often they're too dirty to be of any use. Roadside reflectors are also hard to clean (every reflector needs to be cleaned individually), whereas those lines could be cleaned alongside with the rest of the road.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well , just paint the animals with reflective color, too. How hard is that ? C'mon man, some common sense.

Re:Useless

[reboot246]

You can drive when the moon is out, especially when there's a full moon. I've done it on lonely stretches of road. Just turn off the headlights and you can see pretty much everything you need to see. Of course you can't do it when there are other vehicles out and about.

Re:Useless

[dkf]

Oh, wait, humans can actually see by starlight alone.

Which works just fine when it is cloudy (like it is quite a lot in the Netherlands). Oh, wait...

Re:Useless

[physicsphairy]

Maybe it's not the best for inner city roads, but on long highway stretches it would be awfully nice to be able to see the road far ahead. Especially on road with hills and curves, headlights do a fairly bad job of lighting up that reflective paint (other than what's immediately ahead) because often your car is not oriented so as to illuminate it.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. You'll have to repaint them every time they moult or breed.

Genetically engineer them to glow in the dark and they'll reproduce themselves.

Re:Useless

[rtb61]

Meh, I driven down thousands of kilometres of unlighted roadway, even unpaved roads, dodging roos and wombats like most Europeans would dodge rabbits. Simply adjust road speed to conditions. Road side illumination should be generally restricted to built up areas and be more about restricting nefarious activities rather than traffic safety.

Re:Useless

[nctritech]

Parking lights are surprisingly bright too. Someone I know hit a deer that took out both headlights on a back country road, but the parking lights were still working. They drove home just fine on hazard blinkers.

Re:Useless

[Woek]

First, this allows you to see how the road curves very far ahead, and without using the high beams. It works much better then reflective paint.

Second, this is not painted on the road, it is a special strip that is embedded in the road surface. They can also send a tiny bit of current through it to intensify the glow, which is especially useful in winters. It essentially cuts the energy requirement with a factor of a few million (a number which I just made up).

Disclaimer: I live in the Netherlands

Re:Useless

[AmiMoJo]

There is a lot of important stuff you can't see by moonlight alone. Animals, for example, tend to evolve to be hard to see. At least with headlights there is a chance you will see the light reflecting from their eyes, or their shape against the background.

Re:Useless

[AmiMoJo]

This paint isn't retroreflective, it actually emits light. Good to see the road layout as it enters a bend from some distance away, and the exit to the bend where you headlights aren't pointing.

Re:Useless

[LWATCDR]

Sure on a night with a full moon you may see just fine. On a night with no moon and when it is overcast good luck. Also I live in Florida and in some areas I have hiked in even if it no overcast and there is no moon you are in trouble because of of the tree canopy. Full moon on sugar sand trails you are golden. It is so bright that you can read by it.
Back to the roads. I have driven from Mobile AL to Jackson Ms at night in the winter and I can tell you that those roads are darker than dark and just nerve racking even at the legal speed limit.

Re:Useless

[mjr167]

I'm not sure what this obsession with street lights is... We don't have street lights where I live and it's nice. We somehow manage to not run over children and animals, though the deer do occasionally hit cars. Stupid deer dashing out of the woods and running into cars... (cars never hit deer, the deer always hits the car).

As a result we can look up and see the sky at night and we don't have street lights shining into our houses in the middle of the night.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

on the other hand sensitivity of your eyes decreases when you blast the surroundings with bright light. Outside of the cone of light you don't see shit.

Re:Useless

[mcvos]

I can see just fine by the faint yellow haze that hangs over my city at night.

Re:Useless

[Tom]

Oh, wait, humans can actually see by starlight alone.

If you give your cones time to adapt to night vision. Even a small bit of non-red light falling on them will ruin it instantly for about 20 minutes. Good look keeping night vision up in a car.

Tasteless joke coming in 3..2...1

[Anonymous Coward]

These aren't the first, they've had glowing roads in Fukushima for nye on 3 years now!

*ducks

Nature

[tsa]

Most animals and plants who live alongside the roads will love this. Finally they can sleep in the dark!

Re:Useless for Electricity shills

[DarwinSurvivor]

All the "pictures" in TFA are computer renderings. For a road that, apparently, has already been painted you'd think they could have taken at least 1 photo of it.

eight hours isn't very long

[SimonInOz]

I used to live in the Netherlands, and I can confirm winters are cold and dark. Days are not very bright either. So an eight hour life (yes, I RTFA) for these very cool glowing roads is not going to cut it - nights comprise 16 hours of darkness in midwinter.
It should work well in the summer, when days are brighter and nights shorter.

But I think a backup is required, destroying the whole point.

But it does look very cool, doesn't it?

Re:eight hours isn't very long

[91degrees]

Most night driving is between sunset and midnight though. For the morning hours, this isn't going to help, but cars do still have headlights so we're no worse off than before.

Re:eight hours isn't very long

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dutch article mentioned that the paint can also be illuminated by passing electricity trough it, to cover the long, dark days. This "booster" system is also primarily running from solar power, probably using a battery but that's not explicitly mentioned.

Re:eight hours isn't very long

[91degrees]

That isn't what I said or even something that I remotely implied. Of course they do. So how will not having illuminated roads in the morning make this any worse for them than not having illuminated roads at all at any time?

And how would these not working in the morning make them less useful to those who drive late at night?

Re:eight hours isn't very long

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Won't the lights of the cars passing by charge the lines a bit and thus extend the duration?

Video of the road

[Anonymous Coward]

Just found a video on dutch TV
http://nos.nl/video/634091-eerste-autoweg-met-glowing-lines.html

Re:video of the road

[Amouth]

Wish i had mod points, first useful example of the actual thing.

They do look quite nice, and i'd love to have them where i live, and if they can get rid of the light pollution by reducing the number of street lights i'd be all for them (and willing to pay extra for it too).

Personally i see more value in the temperature sensitive idea, i'd love to see coloration showing up on roads and bridges when the surface temps get down to freezing. Where i live we don't get a lot of snow and ice, but when we do it shuts the place down because people don't know how to spot, avoid, and/or handle it. Giving a visual indication that conditions are right for ice/black ice would be wonderful.

Re:video of the road

[Amouth]

For the temperature, it depends on where you live. If they are covered with snow & Ice then it is obvious, and if the temp is below 0C then it's obvious. but where i live we have a lot of humid wind and bridges. This means you can have black ice when it is 40F or below. funny thing about black ice is it doesn't cover up the road, unless you can catch a glare off of it you can't tell it's there till you hit it.

I think it would be nice to have a color change at least on bridges to show that the surface is below freezing, to warn drivers that there is a strong possibility of black ice.

wouldn't work for most places, but would be really useful for where i live.

Re:Video of the road

[CdXiminez]

The man in the video mentions that, when daylight is insufficient to light up the lines, a tiny bit of electricity is used to make it glow.

Just use headlights

[Gavagai80]

Those of us who don't live in cities have been driving fine at night without streetlights forever. No special paint needed. Cars have headlights.

Re:Just use headlights

[Mashiki]

Those of us who don't live in cities have been driving fine at night without streetlights forever. No special paint needed. Cars have headlights.

I'm guessing you don't actually live anywhere that has serious wear and tear on their roads, otherwise you'd know that by the time half the winter is over that the paint is already worn down to the point where it's useless. And of course, if it's raining good luck on seeing those lines at all. Luckily HID lamps have helped with this, but don't get stuck driving on any Canadian highway anywhere between the months of: January(sometimes if it's really bad, this can hit as early as early November) through June when there is: Snow, rain, slush, mud, slop, dirt, or less than 50% sunlight.

And don't count on the shoulders to be a guide, because we don't really use them in most cases. Though if you're driving on a major highway like the 400 series(401,402,403,etc), some parts of the Trans-Canada, and a few other busy highways, we do have rumble strips.

Re:Just use headlights

[American AC in Paris]

Those of us who don't live in cities have been driving fine at night without streetlights forever.

Of course, y'all have significantly more accidents than us mollycoddled city slickers, so you may want to reconsider the use of "fine" in this context.

video of the road

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a video of the road on dutch television. video of the road
It does look quite nice!

Maybe that's intresting trivia to you...

[bickerdyke]

...but the "Autobahn" in Germany never had any kind of electrical lighting (besides retroreflecting paint for the road markings) and even at night large parts of it are considered save enough to not have speed limits - even at night!

Re:Maybe that's intresting trivia to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no speed limit for some roads, but there are still general rules about how fast you are allowed to drive (adjusting your speed to the conditions of the road, weather, etc.). You have to be able to stop in the part of the road that you can see for example, which excludes cruising along at high speeds with insufficient lights for your speed.

Re:Useless - rather make better headlamps

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Also, this cant work on overcast days . I really don't see the point of it . I'd say they'd rather invest that effort on headlight technology

If needed, it can be powered through electricity according to the Dutch news source.

UK has had LED version for years

[hazeii]

Here in the southern UK we've had solar LED road studs for years - they are used on some A roads and mark line dividers, road edges and turn-offs in place of the usual cats-eyes. Work pretty well too (though I find them a bit 'stroby', like some vehicle brake lights).

Re:UK has had LED version for years

[fellip_nectar]

Yep, I remember the first ones installed near where I live were removed because they allegedly caused accidents due to drivers being distracted by them, because unlike regular cats' eyes, they're visible in the rear view mirror.

Re:wile e. coyote will love this

[91degrees]

Thisis The Netherlands... I don't think they have rock faces. Or hills. Or topology generally.

Re:Useless for Electricity shills

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dutch article (http://nos.nl/audio/634119-het-lijkt-alsof-je-door-een-sprookjesbos-rijdt.html) has a low-res picture of it. The thing looks like a video, but is actually an audio fragment, but the picture is an actual picture of the 500m stretch of road.

Stealth Mode?

[SuperKendall]

Oh, wait, humans can actually see by starlight alone.

Not if you have headlights on, are you supposed to turn them off when you hit this stretch of road? And park for about fifteen minutes to dark adapt?

Re:wile e. coyote will love this

[GrahamCox]

Or a mischievous streak.

A simpler solution

[BetterThanCaesar]

A simpler solution would be to just let all the genetically engineered, glow-in-the-dark lab animals out in the wild. The roadkill will light up the roads.

Re:Useless for Electricity shills

[Anonymous Coward]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bk4mNfMIEAAkefo.jpg

I don't think it's actually in use yet. It's still being set up.

Re:Weather

[zwarte piet]

Hahaha, snow in Netherlands. Doesn't happen very often and when temperatures approach freezing they put salt on the roads before there even is that 1cm of snow. I know, terribly overorganized.....

Re:road side illumination

[Gr8Apes]

Also, where ever practible, around on- and off-ramps.

I personally don't see the point in having lights on most highways given that cars carry around their own illumination, and going straight and changing lanes doesn't need too much effort without lamps. But given the shuffling about just before, and just after, ramps, it's worth spending the resources to improve safety.

For the rest of the length of most highways (even those through urban areas): meh.

The purpose of lights is to improve safety on high speed roads. Hence lighted highways. Otherwise, night time driving would have to be slowed significantly to be safe, unless you're driving with high beams. The oncoming traffic or the guy in front of you may not like that much, and even then, it's probably significantly slower max safe speed as compared to a lighted road.

Re:Useless for Electricity shills

[Tom]

Someone posted a video link above. Not karma whoring, so I'm not repeating it here. If you want an actual image of the actual road, look a few comments further up.

Re:Useless - rather make better headlamps

[aardvarkjoe]

If needed, it can be powered through electricity according to the Dutch news source.

Perhaps by placing a lamp above the road...