Engineers in Japan were able to make music from one of their roads by virtue of vehicle tires rolling over different sets of grooves.

The musical notes you see on the road are simply warnings that just up ahead you'll start to hear music from your tires. The music is made from a series of grooves cut perpendicular to the road. Different pitches are created by cutting the gooves closer or further apart.

The result is a cacophony of tires humming. Apparently, 28mph is the ideal speed to hear for a musical interlude.

InventorSpot.com has a video where you can hear it in action...
http://inventorspot.com/articles/melody_road

Labels: Japan, Road Technology, Strange Stuff

Volvo offers a safety feature on its cars called, "BLIS", short for Blind Spot Information System. It's supposed to detect vehicles in the driver's blind spot.

The company created a television commercial that demonstrates the BLIS using, of all things, a speeding motorcycle as an example.

You can watch the video on Volvo's S80 website, and clicking on "BLIS"...
http://new.volvocars.com/s80/flash.html

To sum up the video, a guy is driving his Volvo S80 on the freeway, and is about to make a lane change, WITHOUT LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER to see if anything is in his blindspot. He would have collided with the motorcycle in his blindspot, except the BLIS alerted him to it, and he corrected himself.

I can't help thinking BLIS is going to make cagers even more lazy. While it can certainly prevent some collisions with motorcycles, this technology is not so much designed to prevent accidents, but designed to create more peace of mind for cagers.

If BLIS finds its way into other makes and models of cars, then people won't have to look over the their shoulders before making a lane change. They can eliminate one more task of responsible driving.

Labels: Road Technology

I came across an article published on a German website called "Spiegel Online", that describes a trend taking place across Europe to improve safe driving by eliminating traffic laws.

The idea is that there are now so many laws, including hundreds of different kinds of signs and stripes and lanes that drivers find themselves sinking into a comfort zone. They don't think too much about what they're supposed to do, they just react to the signs and stripes.

By removing all the signs and stripes along the roads, it forces drivers to think and slow down and be more cautious...

The new traffic model's advocates believe the only way out of this vicious circle is to give drivers more liberty and encourage them to take responsibility for themselves. They demand streets like those during the Middle Ages, when horse-drawn chariots, handcarts and people scurried about in a completely unregulated fashion. The new model's proponents envision today's drivers and pedestrians blending into a colorful and peaceful traffic stream.

Labels: Europe Motorcycle News, Road Technology, Traffic Laws