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Poland Builds a Solar-Powered Bike Path That Glows Blue At Night (techcrunch.com)
Poland recently unveiled a new solar-powered bike path in the town of Pruszkow that is built with "light-emitting material" that gets its power from the sun. While the bike path has the potential to glow multiple different colors, the path in Prusczkow glows a cool blue for up to 10 hours in the dark. TechCrunch reports: The company that made it, TPA sp. z o.o, is an engineering firm focused on future tech. They expect this sort of road to be useful in larger projects -- highways, say -- but for now they're limiting it to bike paths until they can test the material in the wild. They said that this type of path may be installed in Warsaw soon and that it can glow multiple colors. The lane uses luminophores -- chemicals that "ingest" light -- to keep the bike path nicely lit at night. They chose blue to "match the Mazurian landscape" where lakes abound. You can read a bit more at Gazeta Wyborcza if your Polish isn't too rusty or you can just bask in the cold beauty of a glowing bike lane in deepest Poland.
Well, that's a very convoluted way of saying they covered the path with glow-in-the-dark paint.
It's a DUMB idea. As someone who rides in the night, your eyes get used to the dark, there's enough light from the moon, and my LED headlights are more than enough. This chemical shit will just aggravate nocturnal animals and add more toxins to the environment.
This is basically a durable glow-in-the-dark paint, not a bunch of LEDs. If you look at that first photo from the article (where the path appears to glow somewhat brightly), you'll noticed that it was taken with a bit of a long exposure (also why the sunset seems so bright). While I'm sure the paths will be quite visible at night, I hardly think that they'll approach anywhere near the magnitude of LEDs. In other words, I highly doubt that this will have much of an impact on the populace's nighttime response, though it'll probably confuse some insects or something.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
It's not a dumb idea, nor is it particularly bright (in the literal sense ;) ).
The path isn't comprised of a bunch of LEDs, it's basically coated with a durable glow-in-the-dark paint. That's a low-intensity light that won't be blinding by any stretch, and is actually a pretty good idea. As someone who actually rides at night (I commute ~2,500 miles/year on my bike), I'd welcome something like this as it'd be just bright enough to expose things, like branches or people walking in dark clothing, in the path before you're right up on them. Moreover, I'd welcome this over using street lamps to light the paths I take that are currently unlit, since, as I mentioned, this would entail more of a dull glow than a harsh light.
Also, your solution is to use the moon? I take it that there's always a full moon and clear skies where you are?
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.