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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.
Are you worried about trying to not fall asleep while biking ?
Maybe this is the solution.
You have to read the linked article; the same kewl blue was used to make the first chalk outline where the body was found by homicide cops.
If there will ever be that rare instance when you actually read a slashdot article, NOW is the time.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
I'm not in favour of anything that encourages people to ride at night without lights, so be hard to see.
If a bike has lights, even dim ones, standard cateye-reflective paint is better, cheaper, and works after overcast winter days.
Anyone who has used it knows. You can tell this is a very long exposure picture by the city glow in the background.
It's bunk.
Nissan painted a LEAF (car) in it recently and also used the same trick of long exposures to make it look like it wasn't just a dim, laughable glow.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Despite the a/c's crude phrasing, we should be careful about introducing large amounts of anything new into the environment. I was just reading about "Project Plowshare", an idea in the '60s to use nuclear bombs to remodel the earth for engineering projects. Does anyone still think that's a good idea (not you Donald)?
Britain's rivers and lakes polluted by microplastics in paint used for road markings
This is what you earthlings call a joke, yes? but still the article has a cautionary note that the environmental effects are unknown.
There is a path like this near Eindhoven, themed like Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. http://www.holland.com/global/...
This isn't a replacement for a bike light any more than street lamps are a replacement for car headlights; it's there to augment night vision, that's all.
I've got a good headlight for my bike, and I use it at night all the time, but it still has its limitations. Have you never come across something, like a stray branch or random hunk of metal, when you're biking at night? These things are often dark, not particularly reflective, and laying on a dark surface, so they're easy to miss until you're basically running over them, even with a bright headlight to light the way ahead. Having a dull backlight that exposes these things due to occlusion of that light would, for me at least, be very helpful.
I'd also note that this applies to people walking on bike paths at night as well. Speaking personally, I've actually run into someone on an unlit bike path (I was almost able to slam on the brakes in time, so it wasn't major) because I didn't see them -- dressed all in black, no less -- until I was right on top of them. Why didn't I see them? Because there was no ambient light, and the path was curving at that point, so my headlight, being fairly directional, wasn't able to shine directly on them until I was right on top of them. Incidentally, a glowing path would be useful for exposing turns on unfamiliar paths as well.
So, yeah, I've got a good headlight, but I've experienced its limitations, and can see how Poland's solution would address those limitations without costing a bunch in infrastructure, without requiring external power generation, and without introducing overly-bright lights lining bike paths. Assuming that this isn't some environmental catastrophe (I'm assuming it's no better or worse than highway paint), I think this is a pretty good idea.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.