Suggestion to the RSA about "cat's eyes"

Pique

I've spent the last few years doing a quite a few long journeys on N-roads (some decent, some absolutely not) and while on the crappier ones especially (no hard shoulder, twisty, narrow, hills/dips etc) I noticed that the cat's eyes were absolutely shag-all use. They were pretty much only noticaeble when you drove over them.
Now I know nothing about the state of their repair, but I know they are supposed to be 'cleaned' kinda when you drive over them. So I wondered to myself, if they are not actually broken, would it be feasible to have a council truck drive those roads at night with some kind of outrigger wheel specifically to hit the cats eyes in an attempt to clean them and maybe even a jet of water while they're at it?
If they were clean they would increase the safety on those roads immediately (or maybe highlight broken ones versus intact ones). I actually think it's simple/dumb enough that it might work.

What say ye?

TheRiverman

I quite frequently drive on parts of the old N6 both East and West of Athlone and the cats eyes are awful on parts of it.It appears that since the M6 Motorway was completed there has been a lot of neglect of a very basic safety feature of large parts of the old Dublin to Galway road.

Wildly Boaring

If you can't see them they are broken.


The metal shell has a plastic insert that has 2 reflectors on each side of it.

Either the plastic insert has been spat out, stuck down or the reflectors have come off.

In particular the ones on bends will be gone as driven over far more.

Those inserts last about 5 to 7 years and then all should be replaced. Simple job, one man do about 5 or 6km in a shift.

The modern ones are solid and all in one. Claimed longer life.

Isambard

Self cleaning ones went out a long time ago. They're a bit redundant now with the three lines painted on nearly every road.

Wildly Boaring

Isambard wrote: »

It used to be the case that water would collect in the metal casing and driving over the cats eye would depress it into the water to clean it. These haven't been used for many years , they are stuck on studs nowadays if they are needed at all.

Not gone that long.

2006 cashel mitchelstown m8 was done all in the old type anyway

Pique

Well that's a balls. If the current ones are fixed, how are they cleaned from road grime? And on quite a lot of the roads I drive in the last number of years it appears that there has been zero maintenance of the ones on the yellow lines (ie, the ones most needed) as approx 5% seem to actually work and of those about half are so dim that you are almost past it before they shine.

A post above mentioned the "3 lines" which I'm unsure what they mean. What's that? You mean the road markings? Not much help when the yellow lines are completely caked in grime and there is no reflective property or indication of direction in advance which I remember cats eyes doing in the past.

Wildly Boaring

There will be very few fixed modern ones on N roads. They've only been installed the last 10 years.

The fixed ones seem to stay pretty clean regardless. See the ones on any major road eg Newlands cross.

The ones not working are the old ones that are broken. TII (NRA) need to get the finger out and sort these.

Tacitus Kilgore

Dirty or not it's lucky they went with cats eyes rather than arses in the end, otherwise they would have had to kill twice as many cats.

Alun

On smaller roads where they're used I think they often get messed up when they put the old tar and loose chippings on the road.