Glow-in-the-Dark Highway Paint for Safer Night Driving
Australian road marking company Tarmac Linemarking teamed up with firms OmniGrip and Vic Roads to develop a new glow-in-the-dark highway paint that can be used to mark road lines that will glow after the sun goes down. How long will they glow? I’m not sure, but presumably at least a few hours. Besides, nobody should be driving after 11 PM anyways. What are you, a vampire?
The company has a test road already painted with the fluorescent thermoplastic, where it’s expected to last at least ten years before needing reapplication. That’s not bad. For reference, it would only last one winter where I live before it was all swallowed by potholes.
Is this the future of night driving? Maybe. Or maybe the future of night driving is self-driving cars. Yeah – that can fly. Self-driving flying cars, now that’s the real future of night driving. Or at least the only one I really want to be a part of.
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Glow-in-the-Dark Line Markings Deployed to Make the Roads Safer
People who drive at night surely know how difficult it is when the road markings are not visible. Usually, the markings are harder to follow in the dark because the paint has faded or the road was recently paved. The Australians have found that photoluminescent paint can help a great deal with boosting traffic safety.
Photo: Tarmac Linemarkings via Facebook
Driving at night can be challenging, especially when weather conditions are less than optimal. In dense fog, for instance, seeing the road markings can be a lifesaver. That’s why unmarked roads are inherently more dangerous, even in ideal conditions. Australians have found a solution to making road markings more visible at night. They want to paint them in photoluminescent paint, similar to that used for the hands of tactical watches.
The paint will be applied on selected rods in the state of Victoria (Australia) as part of a road safety program by Regional Roads Victoria. The glow-in-the-dark road markings are one of the three treatments projected to be used as part of the state’s Innovative Package, which costs the taxpayers AUD$4 million (USD$2.82 million).
Tarmac Linemarkings is the company chosen to apply the photoluminescent paint alongside OmniGrip and Vic Roads, which will cover the other two treatments. In a recent Facebook post, Tarmac Linemarkings boasted the paint will be applied “all across Gippsland from Phillip Island to the border.”
The second treatment in the Innovative Package involves using road markings with higher reflectivity. This is achieved by adding thicker glass beads and thermoplastic to the paint. It does not make it glow like in the first case. Still, it assures better visibility when the headlights illuminate the dye in the dark.
Finally, the third measure uses LED tactile paving at controlled pedestrian crossings. The LEDs follow the colors of the traffic light for added visibility to pedestrians who, more often than not, have their eyes aiming low toward the phone screen.
However useful it may be, the glow-in-the-dark paint has not escaped criticism. Some are afraid it would be a money pit because it would need to be refreshed often. Others are afraid it could contain dangerous, radioactive materials. Some even consider it outright hazardous because people would want to turn off the headlights to see how cool it is.
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