Years ago while taking a cross-country drive to California with my amazing Dad, he would comment that while many things have changed and improved over time, the highway itself hasn't changed much.
As we were driving in the middle of the night through the Rocky Mountains, on dark curves, we wondered why there weren't more lights for safety and assumed it was due to the massive cost of lighting up hundreds of thousands of similar roads.
Ideas like "glow-in-the-dark" and motion-activated lights are not new, but for some reason, they haven't been applied to highways...until now.
A project in the Netherlands is about to change that on a large scale and hopefully, sooner than later, these innovations will start showing up in the United States.
From Skift via Slate:
Dutch design firm Studio Roosegaarde and infrastructure management group Heijmans have come up with a “smart highway” concept that will replace standard road markings with photoluminescent powder that charges in the daylight and glows through the night. When the temperature drops below freezing, the road will automatically light up with snowflake indicators to warn drivers of possible ice, sort of like the Coors beer cans that turn blue when they’re extra cold.
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