Very dark roads - could reflective paint not be used on centre lines?

NIMAN

I saw a clip recently on the net of a trial in Holland for reflective paint to be used on the roads.

It is basically of the type that is used on your watch face, that absorbs energy during the day and releases it slowly in the dark.

I really think Irelands rural roads could be doing with this. A lot of the roads I drive on in the dark can be very difficult to see once you have a car coming the other way. Sometimes you have to struggle to see the centre line and judge your position from that.

I think if the centre line and maybe lines along both edges were reflective then driving would be a lot safer on unlit roads, of which we have many.

Where To

NIMAN wrote: »

I saw a clip recently on the net of a trial in Holland for reflective paint to be used on the roads.

It is basically of the type that is used on your watch face, that absorbs energy during the day and releases it slowly in the dark.

I really think Irelands rural roads could be doing with this. A lot of the roads I drive on in the dark can be very difficult to see once you have a car coming the other way. Sometimes you have to struggle to see the centre line and judge your position from that.

I think if the centre line and maybe lines along both edges were reflective then driving would be a lot safer on unlit roads, of which we have many.

If you are blinded by ooncoming lights it probably means you are suffering from DWS - Dirty Windscreen Syndrome.

Windowlene is much cheaper and more effective.

Conmaicne Mara

I'd prefer broken lines along each verge. I know driving on newly done roads around here on bad nights isn't something I enjoy a whole lot. Very easy to end up in the bog.

NIMAN

Where To wrote: »

If you are blinded by ooncoming lights it probably means you are suffering from DWS - Dirty Windscreen Syndrome.

Windowlene is much cheaper and more effective.

Yeah must give those windows a clean one of these days!

Its not so much that the oncoming lights blind me, but in towns or cities there is plenty of ambient light around and you can still see the road and surrounding areas. On very very dark rural roads with zero lighting, once a car is close to you, it is very difficult to make out the immediate area outside your car, it ain't just me, others have said it to me too.

But if you had all the white lines visible it would help no end. Just my 2c worth.

miller50841

More effective would be to fit reflector poles at the side's at the least on bad bend's.

Are road's are so bad.

Blind bend's should be no more and land owner's should be forced to clear big ditches and hedging along road's

keithclancy

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/10/glowing-roads/

georgefalls

Then at Christmas they could glow with Santas on them, and at halloween they could have ghosts and goblins. The possibilities are endless..:D

corktina

i grew up with no lines AT ALL on country roads....i'm actually amazed at the money we waste with three lines on every inch of road!

keithclancy

corktina wrote: »

i grew up with no lines AT ALL on country roads....i'm actually amazed at the money we waste with three lines on every inch of road!

You sound like my dad going on about when they had no shoes to go to school so they wore plastic bags on their feet

Popoutman

The white paint in use on Irish roads is already retroreflective. Take a look sometime up close, and you will see lots of little glass beads embedded in it.

If you are regularly blinded by oncoming headlights and you have a clean windscreen, please visit your local eye doctor as it may be possible that you have cataracts starting to form, or are suffering from the standard cloudiness that the more elderly eyes develop over time. One symptom of both of those is increased glare from sunlight daytime, or lights at night.

Anjobe

Popoutman wrote: »

The white paint in use on Irish roads is already retroreflective. Take a look sometime up close, and you will see lots of little glass beads embedded in it.

If you are regularly blinded by oncoming headlights and you have a clean windscreen, please visit your local eye doctor as it may be possible that you have cataracts starting to form, or are suffering from the standard cloudiness that the more elderly eyes develop over time. One symptom of both of those is increased glare from sunlight daytime, or lights at night.

I think the OP is actually referring to luminous/phosphorescent road markings as described here. Sounds like a good idea IMO.

corktina

corktina wrote: »

i grew up with no lines AT ALL on country roads....i'm actually amazed at the money we waste with three lines on every inch of road!

It was way better back then having a small fraction of today's traffic but multiples of the number of today's fatalities.

Qualitymark

Further on that Wired story:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/10/glowing-roads/

Netherlands Highways Will Glow in the Dark Starting Mid-2013
BY WIRED UK10.30.122:46 PM

By Liat Clark
A smart-road design that features glow-in-the-dark tarmac and illuminated weather indicators will be installed in the Netherlands from mid-2013.

“One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave,” the designer behind the concept, Daan Roosegaarde, told Wired.co.uk. “I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us.”

The Smart Highway by Studio Roosegaarde and infrastructure management group Heijmans won Best Future Concept at the Dutch Design Awards, and has already gone beyond pure concept. The studio has developed a photo-luminising powder that will replace road markings — it charges up in sunlight, giving it up to 10 hours of glow-in-the-dark time come nightfall. “It’s like the glow in the dark paint you and I had when we were children,” designer Roosegaarde explained, “but we teamed up with a paint manufacturer and pushed the development. Now, it’s almost radioactive”.

Special paint will also be used to paint markers like snowflakes across the road’s surface — when temperatures fall to a certain point, these images will become visible, indicating that the surface will likely be slippery. Roosegaarde says this technology has been around for years, on things like baby food — the studio has just upscaled it.

The first few hundred metres of glow-in-the-dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Branbant in mid-2013, followed by priority induction lanes for electric vehicles, interactive lights that switch on as cars pass and wind-powered lights within the next five years.

The idea is to not only use more sustainable methods of illuminating major roads, thus making them safer and more efficient, but to rethink the design of highways at the same time as we continue to rethink vehicle design. As Studio Roosegaarde sees it, connected cars and internal navigation systems linked up to the traffic news represent just one half of our future road management systems — roads need to fill their end of the bargain and become intelligent, useful drivers of information too.

<snip>

But in a country where an elderly couple in sheltered housing die of hypothermia amid government plans to further cut the winter heating allowance for the old, I wouldn't hold my breath for this kind of spending.

visual

While reflective paint helps and illumined paint would be better we have to work with what we got.

Clean windscreen
Regular eye test
Good aligned headlights

I find when a road is new and plenty of cat eyes that its much better. But a lot of roads after a few winters are covered in mud and bad ditches.

My pet hate is the idiot's who place rocks on verge of road to protect the patch of grass between their property and road.

Mycroft H

I'm sure cats eyes would be cheaper than painting the roads in luminescent paint.

aujopimur

There's are severe shortage of ordinary white lines on roads and streets in Cork City, Maybe they used the the paint money on those pointless bycycle stands that have appeared around the southside.
PS I cycle as well.

Qualitymark

BX 19 wrote: »

I'm sure cats eyes would be cheaper than painting the roads in luminescent paint.

I think the idea is that when they're resurfacing the road they'll do it with the luminescent material, and then spray on stuff in snowflake patterns that changes colour when the temperature drops to ice level. Probably no dearer or cheaper than resurfacing with untreated tarmac.

Top Dog

Popoutman wrote: »

If you are regularly blinded by oncoming headlights and you have a clean windscreen, please visit your local eye doctor as it may be possible that you have cataracts starting to form, or are suffering from the standard cloudiness that the more elderly eyes develop over time.

To be fair, given the lack of urgency shown by Irish motorists when it comes to replacing bulbs, or making sure that headlights are actually focussed properly, or even dipping their high-beam to regular driving lights - his eyesight could be 20:20 and he'd still get blinded.

Qualitymark

Top Dog wrote: »

To be fair, given the lack of urgency shown by Irish motorists when it comes to replacing bulbs, or making sure that headlights are actually focussed properly, or even dipping their high-beam to regular driving lights - his eyesight could be 20:20 and he'd still get blinded.

It was the first sign of the crash: within two or three days of the banks going phut I saw my first battered car with one headlight; they'd been common up to 2000 or so, then disappeared - or maybe went into hibernation.