A strip of “smart” highway with glow-in-the-dark road markings has opened in The Netherlands. About 500 metres of highway have been treated with a special photo-luminizing powder which absorbs light or “charges” during the day and then emits a soft green light at night which lasts for about 10 hours. The goal is to develop a more sustainable method of illuminating roads. Dutch engineers also plan to test other paints that would show symbols when serve weather hits, e.g., displaying snowflakes when it starts to snow so drivers know the roads are slippery.
The concept itself has been developed through several iterations and has been tested for durability and user experience. As such, the Oss pilot should primarily provide information on how well it works on a day-to-day basis in a real-world setting.
There are a number of other concepts under the Smart Highway umbrella yet to be piloted. Dynamic Paint envisages the use of temperature sensitive paint on the roads to provide contextual information. For example, if it were to be very cold, then the usually transparent paint would become visible and display warning messages.
Picture Credit : Google