First Glow-In-the-Dark Road Debuts In Netherlands 187
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."
waitwhat (Score:5, Funny)
You took too much, man...
Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Useless - rather make better headlamps (Score:2)
On the other hand, some things (like animals and pedestrians) require some means of illumination at night.
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
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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.
Re:Useless - rather make better headlamps (Score:4, Funny)
If needed, it can be powered through electricity according to the Dutch news source.
Perhaps by placing a lamp above the road...
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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 t
Re:Useless (Score:4, Funny)
Well , just paint the animals with reflective color, too. How hard is that ? C'mon man, some common sense.
Re:Useless (Score:4, Funny)
Idiot. You'll have to repaint them every time they moult or breed.
Genetically engineer them to glow in the dark [livescience.com] and they'll reproduce themselves.
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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your car is not oriented so as to illuminate it.
That's a good point - I tend to rely on my navigation device to get some forewarning of the curve and slope of the road ahead just because on a dark and winding road there's no way to see very far ahead.
Then again, glowing roads won't work to entirely replace this when the road winds around a hill or mountain. But more passive safety devices are still a good idea if they can help a little bit. It seems like rumble strips - they don't do anything for most pe
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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.
You should never outdrive your headlights. If your lights aren't illuminating the road in general (to say nothing of the reflective line) well enough for you to drive at your present speed, you're driving too quickly and/or there is something wrong with your headlights. Otherwise, you're driving wrong. You can get away with that shit on a track, but part of driving legally on a road is always being able to see what you're doing. You are legally obligated basically everywhere to be able to see where you're d
Re:Useless (Score:5, Informative)
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
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They seem to last about 20 years, and do the job brilliantly.
I have also seen "glow in the dark paint" before, but can't remember
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In the UK, we have had "cats-eyes" since at least WW2.
We have those too. Problem is that they only reflect light that shines on them, which means you don't see them until you're pretty close. I think the idea behind these glow-in-the-dark lines is that you can see the shape of the road much further ahead.
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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We already have 256k.
Should be good enough for anybody.
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Maybe we could feed the animals food with extra glow in the dark genes. Maybe even the people too.
@PPH - Re:Useless (Score:2)
Streetlights are OK, but headlights are better. An animal or other obstruction will only appear as a shadow against a glowing roadway.
Headlights are not better. Of all the directions of illumination, that from below eye level, and especially from directly ahead (as oncoming traffic's headlights are), is the least effective. Why do you think that football stadiums are floodlit from high towers and not from knee level? Aside from the fact that fixed lighting from grid power is more efficient than car headlights (in the sense of lumens per energy input) where the traffic is continuous, as in towns.
As for obstrucions appearing "as a
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Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Useless (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Very true.
But the article is set in Holland. There is absolutely nowhere in Holland that is not a built up area, and it's been that way for centuries, possibly millenia. So it makes sense they have a lot of street lights. They have relatively little crime and if glowing markings on the road can be made to work reliably in that climate (which I suspect may take some time) it might actually make things safer. Street lights can blind but
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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.
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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.
Most of the UK's motorway network is not lit, and just about all of the dual carriageway network isn't either. In some places they're turned off after a certain time (usually about midnight). In quite a few places, they've got lights, but have stopped using them. You get used to it, and no one drives
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I personally don't see the point in having lights on most highways given that cars carry around their own illumination
Street illumination is more efficient than headlamps both in the sense of lumens-per-energy-input and in the sense of effectiveness per lumen. In traffic, as in most towns most of the time, most of the headlamp lumens end up buried in the tailgate of the car 10 yards or less in front. The effect of most of what does not is to dazzle oncoming drivers. The most effective illumination is from above.
Of course there is a cross-over point. On roads with non-continuous traffic, lights on the car become more
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"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.
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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.
Instead they prefer to so be blinded by streetlights that they can't see the rapist hiding a few meters beside the light spot.
People are counterproductive at times. Streetlight makes most of us feel safe, besides the simple fact that they decrease safety in most cases.
Stealth Mode? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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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...
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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 ra
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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.
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On the other hand, some things (like animals and pedestrians) require some means of illumination at night.
I wonder how we ever managed to survive before electric light...
Oh, wait, humans can actually see by starlight alone.
You're not going to read a book or do rocket surgery but you can walk around outdoors without electric lights even when there's no moon. I've done plenty of hiking, etc. under a full moon.
The thing about starlight is that it's primarily reflected light from our own sun and this changes depending on which part of the lunar cycle you're in. I used to live in a small mining town 1500 KM from the nearest city (so its easy to find a place with no artificial light), you'd have times when it was pitch black and other times where you could see for a KM however the contrast was extremely washed out, so whilst you'd spot a person walking you'd have trouble seeing their face. Put simply, you'll have a
Re:Useless (Score:4, Funny)
I can see just fine by the faint yellow haze that hangs over my city at night.
Re:Useless for Electricity shills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useless for Electricity shills (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Useless for Electricity shills (Score:5, Informative)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bk4mNfMIEAAkefo.jpg [twimg.com]
I don't think it's actually in use yet. It's still being set up.
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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.
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Tasteless joke coming in 3..2...1 (Score:2, Funny)
*ducks
Nature (Score:4, Funny)
Most animals and plants who live alongside the roads will love this. Finally they can sleep in the dark!
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Photoregulated plants don't tend to get all in a tizzy when illuminated by anything less intense than full moonlight. Anything that will is already being disrupted by headlights, which interfere with the long periods of darkness necessary for them to shift between modes.
eight hours isn't very long (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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Yes. No one drives short before sunrise in winter.
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And how would these not working in the morning make them less useful to those who drive late at night?
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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.
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8 hours covers a lot of late night traffic. When it's dark from, say, 5pm to 7am, you can get to about midnight before the power is out. So what's left is the early morning traffic that's out of light, i.e. that has to deal with what we have already.
Still I'd consider it a boost in safety. The chance to be lost in the side ditch of the road with nobody coming by for hours is heaps lower at 6am compared to 1am.
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Won't the lights of the cars passing by charge the lines a bit and thus extend the duration?
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Forget about the sunshine, assume you have enough of it.
What about the snow? The road will have to be wiped clean every-damn-time when it snows even a little for the markings to be visible. Good thing there are no cliffs in the Netherlands.
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Move anywhere north, east or south and conditions are worse.
Furthermore, in the west there's light emitting from greenhouses, harbors, highways (sodium-vapor) and residences.
The Christmas trees, they are hurting my eyes.
Video of the road (Score:5, Informative)
Just found a video on dutch TV
http://nos.nl/video/634091-eerste-autoweg-met-glowing-lines.html
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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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just use headlights (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Most people don't live in a country with exceptional winter weather like that. For the relatively mild winters that northern europe gets and hence the reasonable state of the roads - headlights are fine.
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I was in North Caroline a while ago and it reminded me of a bad stretch of Polish road. Canada is ok, given its two seasons (winter and road repair season?).
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Meanwhile here in Atlantic Canada.. we're lucky to have a little asphalt between the potholes, let alone lane markings you can actually see at night/when it's raining.
And we totally are doing it wrong. Cheap paint, shoddy quick patch jobs that sometimes fail in the same day (I sat in a tim hortons looking out the window and watched in awe as a team poured some filler into a hole filled with water. The water was literally splashing out as they poured).
It's gotten so bad that it's actually a major news story
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Uhh, we plow I-80 for 4 months of the year in Norcal, and we still have lane markings. Maybe you're doing it wrong.
Last time I looked, Norcal doesn't use on average of 1ton of salt per 10 miles per road either, we do. Unless of course it's too cold for it, then we use sand or gravel. Yep it really does get cold enough here in Canada that salt and chemical deicers stop working on road surfaces.
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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 [google.com] than us mollycoddled city slickers, so you may want to reconsider the use of "fine" in this context.
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video of the road (Score:5, Informative)
there is a video of the road on dutch television. video of the road [nos.nl]
It does look quite nice!
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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 shu
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if they can get rid of the light pollution by reducing the number of street lights i'd be all for them
That, or install adequate reflectors on the streetlights. I mean, seriously, WTF.
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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
Maybe that's intresting trivia to you... (Score:4, Interesting)
...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!
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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.
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Uh... I am german and I've driven thousands of kilometers on the Autobahn at night. While long stretches of it do in fact not have lighting, the parts in or near cities often do. And that's where even at night you get some traffic.
But since the Autobahn has a mid-divider, there's really nothing that you need to see. You see the tail lights of cars in front of you much better in the dark anyways, and at 160 or 200 kph, a deer jumping in front of you isn't a problem of visibility.
Much of it all is, however, d
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I'm from Germany too, so I know the Autobahn quite well, too, but have hardly ever seen lighting there. (Except NRW) but that may vary.
And you wish it were 3 seconds.... at 150kph you're going at 41m/s. That's 120m in 3 seconds. Headlights go 50-60m up to 100m on the right side if - IF - you have assymetric headlights.
http://www.rechtslexikon.net/d... [rechtslexikon.net]
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Fernlicht goes further. At night in the countryside, you can often use it because you're literally the only car on the road.
Or maybe that's just me because when I drive long distances at night, I make it deep in the night so there's no traffic.
I've rarely driven through NRW, but at the northern edge to Niedersachen, around Osnabrück for example, there's definitely lights on the Autobahn. There most definitely are in Berlin, Hamburg, etc. But yes, it's mostly near and in the large cities.
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UK has had LED version for years (Score:3)
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).
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I don't like cat eyes of either type (Score:2)
Mainly because they don't work as well as is claimed. Having a couple of dots of light every few metres isn't nearly as clear as having glowing road lines. I suppose however in their favour the eyes last much longer.
Another issue however with cats eyes is the effect they have on tyres. Its conveniently never mentioned by the govn but driving over hard lumps of metal in the road - even if they do squash down a bit - at high speed over the years when changing lanes will wear out your tyres faster and can I su
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Yes, very good. Except discarded beer cans and rocks arn't usually found every 2 metres on a motorway that you do 70mph on.
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A simpler solution (Score:3)
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.
Weather (Score:2)
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A snow covered road is unsafe to drive on for the general public (no 4-wheel drive and no snow tires/chains) - so removing the snow is generally a very high priority (plows and salt). The times when snow is covering the strip will be rare.
Light Pollution (Score:2, Interesting)
Seeing as how all of the light is directed upward, this adds to light pollution, which some people blame a lot of problems on: http://darkskyinitiative.org/ [darkskyinitiative.org]
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this adds to light pollution
Assuming street lights are removed, does the upward light from these strips exceed the reflected light from the streetlights?
Negative Review of this Idea from a Pro-Dutch Blog (Score:2)
This blog extolling Dutch road design innovation [aviewfromt...lepath.com] is nonetheless quite dismissive of the "glowing paint" idea, and mentions the use of glass bead retroreflectors (as in the UK) as a much better idea. It makes a good case.
I have a better idea (Score:2)
Instead of using luminescent paint for the lines, why can't we imbed piezoelectric crystals into the tarmac that would generate light from the mass of the vehicle. That way you'd see this glow where the cars are.
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Radioactive (Score:2)
Note to self: When trying to sell a product, probably should not associate it with "radioactive".
> Roosegaarde told Wired.co.uk that Heijmans had managed to take its luminescence to the extreme—"it's almost radioactive", said Roosegaarde
you're kidding me, right? (Score:2)
So the standard US policy of making a 1 mile test strip didn't quote make it over to the Netherlands? They just threw it on 500 miles and said let's see if it works? Genius.
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Re:wile e. coyote will love this (Score:5, Funny)
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Liar! They have water and they have land. What more of topology do you want? Ok, they sometimes turn the former into the later for no reason other than forcing all the map makers to redraw and all the encyclopedias to update the "land size" entry every few decades, but aside from that...
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