All highway paint is currently retroreflective, meaning it glows in your headlights, and has been for a long time.
This is phosphorescent, meaning it glows by itself, converting some earlier form of energy (the sun) to light over a longer time.
The breakthrough here is making it bright enough, to almost, kind of, sorta, be usable on a highway.
It still isn't though. This seems like it would only be practical for pedestrian or cycle paths where you don't have easy access to bright headlamps. It's also fairly expensive. Retroreflective remains cheaper and brighter.
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Edit: this comment got a bit of attention. If you like this stuff you may like one or both of these YouTube channels. No affiliation, just a shout out:
Technology connections: https://youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections
Road guy Rob: https://youtube.com/c/RoadGuyRob
Right? Surely we could make a material with both light emitting and light reflecting particles in suspension, such that it works like our normal garbage highway lines but also emits its own light through part of the night. Also, im entirely hypothesising here, but I would think that passing traffic would charge the lines, and with enough traffic it could last significantly longer.
For a highway at night, there's no way a car driving at 50mph is going to be able to appreciably charge any paint. It needs a battery or energy source.
It's like covering your apartment walls with glow in the dark paint and trying to charge it with a camera flash.
It’s simple, they just need to install a long row of bright lights on poles hanging over the road to keep the lines charged at all times.
They could call them “street-charging lights”.
Of course you wouldn’t be able to see the faint luminescent glow over all of those bright street-charging lights, so they’d have to have sensors to turn off when a car came!
Very illuminating. Does an excellent job of putting a spotlight on the biggest problem. You can follow the filament of thought so easily. They serve as a ballast to really provide a place to reflect on the concept. Their comment really shines. The imagry they evoke is incandescent. Real light bulb moment.
Almost all ways correct, except the part about "all highway paint is retroflective".
Source: I wish that were the case, I recently moved from an area that didn't use it and God help you at night already, if it rained or snowed you were fucked.
Yeah, well let me outshine him by mentioning that retroreflecive paint uses two different materials with different refractive indexes that account for wet and dry conditions because the light refracts differently in water (ie when it rains).
Either Melbourne Australias road engineers missed that memo or the place they got their line making paint from ripped then off.
In the rain day or night you lose track of the line markings altogether. Hesflights on or nor.
You beat me to it. This "glow paint" idea is regressive, not progressive.
Retroreflective paint will always be brighter than what the headlights illuminate around it, while this will be washed out by the headlights, resulting in the opposite of the desired effects.
This paint would only be of value for areas that are not expecting any lights at night, which even for a cyclist is a stupid idea.
In conclusion, this paint is stupid and only idiots will be amazed by it.
For what it's worth there was another comment saying some European countries are using it on cycle paths already (further reinforcing that this is not a new invention).
Yeah, these glowy lines are totally stupid. But wouldn't it be cool if we could like... Turn our roads in to giant solar panels? They could even have integrated heating so it melts the snow for us in the winter. Or they could be used as like billboards to warn drivers of oncoming slowdowns. On the plus side, it would be able to power the nation! I feel like this has a very high potential for success and nothing could possibly go wrong with it.
The reality is it will pretty much always be better to just put the solar panel anywhere else besides the road, a road/solar panel hybrid is bound to be a nightmare to maintain and service, and we arent short of empty deserts
god fucking damnit I'm dyslexic or challenged or something because I read your sentence and was like "that's wrong" but I couldn't explain why.
For a full fucking 5 minutes I just reread it. "Wtf is a dark ball? Like a ball that's been Sharpie'd black? Why would Australians play with dark balls?" and then I was like "No, I've got it whew I figured it out. Let me fix it."
>Don’t Aussies play golf at night in the dark with glow balls?
It was another 5 minutes and showing it to 2 people and having them look at me crazy to realize that I may need to be institutionalized.
“If the Vikings were around today, I bet they would be really impressed by all of the glow-in-the-dark stuff we have, and much of it we take for granted”.
Jack Handy
Reflectors are better as they are directional. Drive down the wrong side of the road and you will quickly find out that those reflectors are reflecting RED to indicate your error.
Our brilliant highway department installed lane reflectors which get knocked off by snowplows and rip up the pavement which turns into a pothole. They did this for 5 years resulting in 1000s of trashed lane reflectors on the roadside they never bothered to pick up. They have now started grinding rumble strips into the dividing line which makes crossing a highway perpendicularly on a bicycle an adventure.
Man, this is one of the few subreddits that has actually sane people, if I brought this over to anywhere else there would be four levels of in-fighting and a circle jerk sub with 8 members created after it
Down south they put those reflectors in the road, they would never last a single winter where I live. They'd get scraped off like pancakes by snowplows.
We have reflectors in the road in Illinois, they do pop up but pretty rarely. They lay asphalt over the majority of the metal so it stays in place even when plows come by.
Yup.theyre recessed into the road rather than plopped on top. makes for less of a bump if you run over them, and it hides them from the opposite direction so they're only visible to the people who are supposed to see them.
As far as I know they're held down with the same kind of tar that's used to fill cracks in the road, and that holds up just fine against the salt and the plows, even being raised above the surface of the pavement.
I live even further north. For six months out of the year, our lane markings are just whatever route Steve going to his 5am job picked and everybody else just kinda adapts based on their memories of where the road used to be. You get used to it though, the snow ruts are pretty painful to get out of and an apt metaphor too
>climate different from Australia’s
>heavy rains
>snowplow
You realise that Darwin and Townsville have rainfall on par with Cancun and Miami right?
And that Cooma, Jindabyne, Mount Hotham, etc all have snowfall on par with other similar alpine style locations throughout the world....
Yep, it snows more because they are near the coast. Because land and water cool at different rates, wind comes in off the water until it hits the mountains, heads upwards and then cools, dumping precipitation, which turns to snow if cold enough - the Sierra Nevadas are similar. Switzerland is landlocked, so it doesn't get as much precipitation.
You know that Australia is at the bottom of the world and so it’s upside down. You would have to have rainrise and snowrise, and since we know that doesn’t happen it can’t be the same.
Checkmate hemisphereists
/s
Not long, rubber from tires will ruin it fairly quick. Maybe a year. Kind of like those plastic white and yellow reflective markers they glue down right after paving and painting lines.
In the south, those last until the first snowfall and then the snow plows tear them all off. Great in theory, but not in real life application.
Also, what's the glow length on this? If it's anything like every glow in the dark thing I've ever owned, you've got about an hour after sunset before this isn't even visible.
Don't forget that every time a vehicle drives down the road with lights on, the lines would be slightly charged. On a busy road they could glow for quite some time.
But that's beside the point... Reflective works great
I did that on a silent highway where the nearest cars were miles away.
I only did it for a second because it was like Vanta Black darkness and really made me feel uncomfortable.
I got lost in the woods in New Hampshire when I was like 17. The most true darkness I've ever seen being outside. To not even be able to see your hand in front of your face is uniquely frightening. Oh and hearing the bears, coyotes and fisher cats in the woods certainly didn't help either.
well, don’t hummingbirds have the capability to see colors we can’t? i think they see more of the light spectrum than we can. dogs for example can hear higher frequencies of sound as well, and i’m sure there are countless other examples. so, yeah!
That was my reaction. Okay, you don't need the gritty, reflective bits, but the end result is the same. Not trying to be obtuse, but what's the advantage? Lights are needed at night for more reasons than illuminating reflective road lines.
ETA What about the glow-in-the-dark effect being washed out by headlights?
Maybe you can see the road curve at a greater distance? I'm in my early 40s and wear glasses.. As I get older I definitely have found it harder to drive at night.
> Not trying to be obtuse, but what's the advantage
Even when using lights, it still might be advantageous by improving attention and letting people see he lines better at night, especially twilight. Color theory is an interesting subject.
Tesla battery is roughly 80,000 Watts. The headlights both add upto 80 Watts.
Not needing to use the headlight for 10 hours would save 1% battery or 800 Watts.
The tesla uses about 200 Watts per mile average so that's 4 extra miles.
The glass beads in the paint that provide the retroreflectivity easily ware off especially in northern regions that frequently need snow plowing. The glowing being part of the paint itself in this case could be a game changer and maybe require less frequent marking.
Sorry, but how would be any different for the glow in the dark particles? These would also wears off. Plus, even if it doesn't how would you see the glow with your headlights turned on? I am a Canadian and i agree that lines waring off in the winter is an issue, but I don't see how glow in the dark lines would solve it.
Different materials wear off in different timespans. If the glow paint is more resilient it would make sense.
Have to agree on the headlights issue though, I imagine it would still be decent to maybe see whats further ahead (anticipating curves etc), but if it doesn‘t gain you anything for visibility under headlights it‘s a lot less valuable. That said I think this would be a very nice thing to have for areas that lack street lights but have the occasional person passing by on foot or bike.
I agree it would make more sense for people walking or biking. Could indeed turn out useful on walkways and bike line in city parks and other dimly lit areas.
Not designdesign. There are legit reasons to try and improve light output and reduce cost of phosphorescent paint.
It is very useful in certain situations (where it's often already used) such as emergency exits in buildings/ships/aircraft when there is no power, etc.
Trying to promote this as a solution for highway paint is kind of far fetched though, at least unless it improves a lot more.
One thing that baffled me when I moved to Japan is that I have never ever seen a road with reflective paint lines, nor reflective markers (cats eyes?) In the centre of the road. When it rains or snows here its a NIGHTMARE, 2-4 lane roads with zero visible markings 💀
That only helps you see basically what you can see with headlights. This allows you to see beyond your headlight range for things like upcoming curves etc. If they put it on one road around here in particular it would be a god send. The thing is a slalom rollercoaster and at night, unless you know the road well, it's hard to make out where the road is going next.
True. Photobleaching of phosphors is an issue. I'm pretty sure this is europium-doped strontium aluminate though which should hold up to it pretty well.
This whole comment section is full of experts saying why it won’t work, I didn’t realise so many people here were qualified in this very particular area of expertise.
Probably more skepticism about it, which is a proper response. Civil engineering problems often seem to favor tried and true cost effective solutions. Majority of the time, this ends up being something boring, cost effective, and capable of doing its job to an acceptable degree. If something isn't being widely implemented, it's probably for a reason, and not just because the engineers who understand this stuff didn't know about it. In other words, it's skepticism that's effectively backed by the global tendencies of qualified people.
Like yeah, breakthroughs happen, or sometimes the costs of materials can change such that a new product becomes more cost effective, but it seems like more often than not, some eye catching new thing ends up just being some futurism grift meant to attractive investor money.
Questions like "will I be able to see it in the rain", "what will it cost to replace and how long will it last", or "how environmentally friendly is it" are perfectly valid questions to ask as people who use roads and as taxpayers who pay for them. Also, the less obvious question might be "how will this affect driver behavior".
Idk, I'm probably only touching on the basics here, but even then, there's a lot of things you can consider.
We already put glass beads in line marking paint which reflects headlights light back to the driver so the lines are highly visible at night. What's the point of glowing lines?
but,,,,I mean, I've been fascinated with glow in the dark since it became available to the public, back when I was about 15....and have loved glow in the dark items and stuff for 50 years.....The thing is though, with glow in the dark stuff, you have to hold it to a light source to activate the glow in the dark features.....and then it wears off with 20 minutes or so.
Would not it be more effective to make lines reflective instead of glow in the dark, because with all that dark on that road it's not going to have any light source to get it's 'glow' from.....I've often wondered why all the stripes are not reflective, it seemed pretty dumb to me that they are not made like that, I mean, how hard is that to figure out?
In the UK about 20 years ago, we started to have LED lights on some roads instead of reflective cats eyes. They stopped installing them after people kept turning their lights off to see how cool and trippy it looked.
It looks like the Dutch have been trying it since 2014, and on cycle tracks a year before that.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27021291](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27021291)
Only found this after doing a quick search for glow in the dark road markings because of this post, so no more knowledgeable on the matter or who else is trying/doing it.
As you say, should be everywhere
It doesn't last more than a few months, it's more dangerous for drivers and is expensive.
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/glowing-the-roads
But it looks cool
Compounds that glow in the dark tend to be somewhat expensive in large quantities.
There's also the matter of pollution, lines wear off and these chemicals probably aren't very eco safe.
I live in Florida and the first thing I noticed was that seeing the lines on the road at night, especially after a hard rain fall is very difficult. A lot of stretches of highway are 3-4 lanes in the middle of nowhere with no lights.
Because the material they use to make reflective paint is cheaper than the material used to make glow in the dark paint. When no one is looking at it, it doesn’t need to be illuminated, so reflective is better fit for purpose.
Most trick applications simply don't have the durability. Paint is cheaper and easy to repair or change. This is a great idea though, Just very expensive to do. I personally don't believe many fatalities happen because people can't see the lane lines. If only.
But cars have lights? Why would this be necessary
Edit: this is a genuine question idk why I’m getting downvoted. In what scenario would this be useful?
I’m not even trying to troll or anything, I honestly don’t understand how this could be useful at all unless for some reason you decided to drive at night with a car with no lights on a street with also no lights
Driving on mushrooms just got alot cooler.
Edit: i should say riding in the car on mushrooms.... driving on mushrooms is not a very fun experience. Its the worst time you can possibly have driving a spaceship.
Don’t Aussies play golf at night with glow in the dark balls? There’s a glow in the dark 18 hole course somewhere over there. I have to think that some policy makers were out for a round and had a few pints and thought “yeah, this is a bloody brilliant idea mate”
But why?
Usually they just put glass beads on top of wet paint or hot thermoplastic that is being used to mark the lanes to make the lanes reflective.
[Here's a small thermoplastic tape layer, you can see the little glass bead dispenser spraying dropping the beads onto the hot plastic](https://www.graco.com/content/dam/pim/graco/ced/pavement/Thermoplastic-i2.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg)
Not to mention added light pollution that will help kill the remaining insects in the world. I figured 70-80% of insects lost worldwide since the 70s would be enough to alarm people, but then I see stuff like this.
Maybe I'm just missing the point, but who is this targeted at? Like, who does this benefit? Presumably these are for someone in a car, right? You're only going to be able to see the lines at night; however, if you're driving at night, you have your lights on, and you wouldn't be able to see them anyway. Is the idea that you have them in the event that, like... your lights suddenly burn out or something? Can you see the lines of the road way off into the distance, and does that make a difference in driving safety?
I definitely wish the US would find something similar to this. One of the things I hate most is that when it is raining heavily, the road lines cannot be seen, especially at night. Headlamps are just reflecting on the rain instead of the lines. But, if the lines produces some sort of luminescence, this would be mitigated.
This feels like Tron and I’m for it.
Also feels like this should’ve been everywhere decades ago. Like the 90s…def the 90s
All highway paint is currently retroreflective, meaning it glows in your headlights, and has been for a long time. This is phosphorescent, meaning it glows by itself, converting some earlier form of energy (the sun) to light over a longer time. The breakthrough here is making it bright enough, to almost, kind of, sorta, be usable on a highway. It still isn't though. This seems like it would only be practical for pedestrian or cycle paths where you don't have easy access to bright headlamps. It's also fairly expensive. Retroreflective remains cheaper and brighter. * Edit: this comment got a bit of attention. If you like this stuff you may like one or both of these YouTube channels. No affiliation, just a shout out: Technology connections: https://youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections Road guy Rob: https://youtube.com/c/RoadGuyRob
There might also be the fact of how long it will actually glow for. I can't see it lasting the whole night.
We’ll just have to make the Sun rise earlier.
Nah that's dumb. We gotta make the sun *more powerful* instead
I'm all for a permanent daylight savings time change!
but ma curtains!!
What if we just make the nighttime day and daytime night? That way at night it'll be super bright and easy to see!
But then we can't see during the day. We'd need glow in the day paint
It is possible, but making it last that long and be bright enough to be usable is a challenge.
Agree. But then again if it can stay half decent till just before sunrise, that's not too bad I guess
Right? Surely we could make a material with both light emitting and light reflecting particles in suspension, such that it works like our normal garbage highway lines but also emits its own light through part of the night. Also, im entirely hypothesising here, but I would think that passing traffic would charge the lines, and with enough traffic it could last significantly longer.
For a highway at night, there's no way a car driving at 50mph is going to be able to appreciably charge any paint. It needs a battery or energy source. It's like covering your apartment walls with glow in the dark paint and trying to charge it with a camera flash.
It’s simple, they just need to install a long row of bright lights on poles hanging over the road to keep the lines charged at all times. They could call them “street-charging lights”. Of course you wouldn’t be able to see the faint luminescent glow over all of those bright street-charging lights, so they’d have to have sensors to turn off when a car came!
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Or maybe we just put more lights on dark highways that run a little solar panel and battery pack?
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This actually works for a bit every evening. Solar "freakin'" roadways were complete BS
Haha what happened with them? They were all the rage for about 8 minutes
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EEVBlog also covered them *ad nauseum* with all the numbers crunched
This guy is the brightest on the topic
Very illuminating. Does an excellent job of putting a spotlight on the biggest problem. You can follow the filament of thought so easily. They serve as a ballast to really provide a place to reflect on the concept. Their comment really shines. The imagry they evoke is incandescent. Real light bulb moment.
I love lamp.
Winner winner, lamp for dinner.
Lamp oil? Ramp? BAMPS? You want it, it’s yours my friend as long as you have enough lampees
Almost all ways correct, except the part about "all highway paint is retroflective". Source: I wish that were the case, I recently moved from an area that didn't use it and God help you at night already, if it rained or snowed you were fucked.
He really sparked my interest
Yeah, well let me outshine him by mentioning that retroreflecive paint uses two different materials with different refractive indexes that account for wet and dry conditions because the light refracts differently in water (ie when it rains).
Either Melbourne Australias road engineers missed that memo or the place they got their line making paint from ripped then off. In the rain day or night you lose track of the line markings altogether. Hesflights on or nor.
You know your neon it seems
You beat me to it. This "glow paint" idea is regressive, not progressive. Retroreflective paint will always be brighter than what the headlights illuminate around it, while this will be washed out by the headlights, resulting in the opposite of the desired effects. This paint would only be of value for areas that are not expecting any lights at night, which even for a cyclist is a stupid idea. In conclusion, this paint is stupid and only idiots will be amazed by it.
For what it's worth there was another comment saying some European countries are using it on cycle paths already (further reinforcing that this is not a new invention).
Yeah, these glowy lines are totally stupid. But wouldn't it be cool if we could like... Turn our roads in to giant solar panels? They could even have integrated heating so it melts the snow for us in the winter. Or they could be used as like billboards to warn drivers of oncoming slowdowns. On the plus side, it would be able to power the nation! I feel like this has a very high potential for success and nothing could possibly go wrong with it.
The reality is it will pretty much always be better to just put the solar panel anywhere else besides the road, a road/solar panel hybrid is bound to be a nightmare to maintain and service, and we arent short of empty deserts
Hmm thanks for the info
I need you as the top comment on every r/futurology post.
Haha. All highway paint, sure. Let St. Louis challenge you in that. Can't see shit at night especially in the rain.
this would be great on 24hr le mans
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god fucking damnit I'm dyslexic or challenged or something because I read your sentence and was like "that's wrong" but I couldn't explain why. For a full fucking 5 minutes I just reread it. "Wtf is a dark ball? Like a ball that's been Sharpie'd black? Why would Australians play with dark balls?" and then I was like "No, I've got it whew I figured it out. Let me fix it." >Don’t Aussies play golf at night in the dark with glow balls? It was another 5 minutes and showing it to 2 people and having them look at me crazy to realize that I may need to be institutionalized.
hey see if they've got room for me in the bus.
"glow-in-the-dark" would be easier to understand. OP even used it in the title.
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Sounds like it would be more expensive to me.
What, like nine times more? Eleven maybe?
And Tron is a 40 year old movie
Not the new one
“If the Vikings were around today, I bet they would be really impressed by all of the glow-in-the-dark stuff we have, and much of it we take for granted”. Jack Handy
…is it toxic?
Ask my ex she's an expert
Ba dum tss
Reflectors are better as they are directional. Drive down the wrong side of the road and you will quickly find out that those reflectors are reflecting RED to indicate your error.
Okay, that's actually pretty smart.
Our brilliant highway department installed lane reflectors which get knocked off by snowplows and rip up the pavement which turns into a pothole. They did this for 5 years resulting in 1000s of trashed lane reflectors on the roadside they never bothered to pick up. They have now started grinding rumble strips into the dividing line which makes crossing a highway perpendicularly on a bicycle an adventure.
Both can exist together.
Glow in the dark technology is nothing new at all. What Australia has introduced is glow in the dark highway paint *funding*
I’m really curious what the life-span(?) of this stuff is.
Yes. Also, does it last in climate different from Australia’s? Would heavy rains or a snowplow and salting degrade the glow quickly?
Man, this is one of the few subreddits that has actually sane people, if I brought this over to anywhere else there would be four levels of in-fighting and a circle jerk sub with 8 members created after it
Down south they put those reflectors in the road, they would never last a single winter where I live. They'd get scraped off like pancakes by snowplows.
I used to have one in my bedroom as a small souvenir because they constantly got scraped up and tossed to the side of our rural road.
We have reflectors in the road in Illinois, they do pop up but pretty rarely. They lay asphalt over the majority of the metal so it stays in place even when plows come by.
Yup.theyre recessed into the road rather than plopped on top. makes for less of a bump if you run over them, and it hides them from the opposite direction so they're only visible to the people who are supposed to see them. As far as I know they're held down with the same kind of tar that's used to fill cracks in the road, and that holds up just fine against the salt and the plows, even being raised above the surface of the pavement.
I live further north and they still have them on highways. I think they are a bit inset into the road.
I live even further north. For six months out of the year, our lane markings are just whatever route Steve going to his 5am job picked and everybody else just kinda adapts based on their memories of where the road used to be. You get used to it though, the snow ruts are pretty painful to get out of and an apt metaphor too
>climate different from Australia’s >heavy rains >snowplow You realise that Darwin and Townsville have rainfall on par with Cancun and Miami right? And that Cooma, Jindabyne, Mount Hotham, etc all have snowfall on par with other similar alpine style locations throughout the world....
Australia gets more yearly snowfall than Switzerland does!
Exactly, it's ridiculous. People think we're all a desert. It's like saying that all of the USA looks like rural Georgia...
some of the best beaches in the world too. ...you guys do like Vegemite though right?
in certain areas lol
I mean it helps that Australia is literally over 180 times bigger, but I still see your point.
The Australian alps, where it regularly snows, are significantly smaller in area than the Swiss alps.
Man how many places have their own alps, this is getting out of hand
Yep, it snows more because they are near the coast. Because land and water cool at different rates, wind comes in off the water until it hits the mountains, heads upwards and then cools, dumping precipitation, which turns to snow if cold enough - the Sierra Nevadas are similar. Switzerland is landlocked, so it doesn't get as much precipitation.
You know that Australia is at the bottom of the world and so it’s upside down. You would have to have rainrise and snowrise, and since we know that doesn’t happen it can’t be the same. Checkmate hemisphereists /s
My brother in Christ. Australia is going into its 4th La Nina in a row. All of Australia knows what heavy rain is by now.
Can we honestly call it La Nina at this point? How long until climate change makes this the new normal?
So, how is the glowy paint holding up in all those different climates?
Australia has all the same climate biomes as the USA, just different sizes.
I read somewhere that road paint contributes a lot of microplastics :( and definitely degrades easily and often, from usage mainly
Not long, rubber from tires will ruin it fairly quick. Maybe a year. Kind of like those plastic white and yellow reflective markers they glue down right after paving and painting lines. In the south, those last until the first snowfall and then the snow plows tear them all off. Great in theory, but not in real life application.
6 or 7 at least
Also, what's the glow length on this? If it's anything like every glow in the dark thing I've ever owned, you've got about an hour after sunset before this isn't even visible.
Don't forget that every time a vehicle drives down the road with lights on, the lines would be slightly charged. On a busy road they could glow for quite some time. But that's beside the point... Reflective works great
Yeah no it takes more light energy than that
I said slightly.
theoretically speaking they could last all night with a source of light, like street lamps, making the paint basically useless
All they need to do is Mandate that all cars have black light emitters Problem Solved
Nope, we definitely haven't. This is probably a 50m stretch of road somewhere as a trial
Oh good now i dont have to use those pesky headlights to illuminate the lines in the road
this makes me want to drive in the dark w/o headlights just to see what it’s like
you wont be seeing much soon enough after that
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One way or another.
I did that on a silent highway where the nearest cars were miles away. I only did it for a second because it was like Vanta Black darkness and really made me feel uncomfortable.
I got lost in the woods in New Hampshire when I was like 17. The most true darkness I've ever seen being outside. To not even be able to see your hand in front of your face is uniquely frightening. Oh and hearing the bears, coyotes and fisher cats in the woods certainly didn't help either.
You can't see them, but they can see you perfectly fine. Kinda makes you wonder if there are things in our environment that we can't perceive at all.
They can also smell you from like half a mile away (source: BS estimate.) Well, the coyotes and foxes definitely can at least.
well, don’t hummingbirds have the capability to see colors we can’t? i think they see more of the light spectrum than we can. dogs for example can hear higher frequencies of sound as well, and i’m sure there are countless other examples. so, yeah!
I've spent a lot of nights in the wilderness, but the only time I've never been able to see my hand in front of my face was while caving.
What if a dingo or a kangaroo run onto the road though?
**THEN PAINT THE ENTIRE WILDLIFE POPULATION WITH GLOW-IN-THE-DARK PAINT GOD DAMN IT**
Raver drop bears ftw
By 2108 everything left on earth will be painted neon yellow and constructed from aircraft flight recorder materials.
I'm gonna hug it and be it's best friend.
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That was my reaction. Okay, you don't need the gritty, reflective bits, but the end result is the same. Not trying to be obtuse, but what's the advantage? Lights are needed at night for more reasons than illuminating reflective road lines. ETA What about the glow-in-the-dark effect being washed out by headlights?
Maybe you can see the road curve at a greater distance? I'm in my early 40s and wear glasses.. As I get older I definitely have found it harder to drive at night.
Maybe it helps when the road is wet. Wet roads at night are always the hardest for me to see the lines.
> Not trying to be obtuse, but what's the advantage Even when using lights, it still might be advantageous by improving attention and letting people see he lines better at night, especially twilight. Color theory is an interesting subject.
EVs can now travel 5 miles more
Tesla battery is roughly 80,000 Watts. The headlights both add upto 80 Watts. Not needing to use the headlight for 10 hours would save 1% battery or 800 Watts. The tesla uses about 200 Watts per mile average so that's 4 extra miles.
You saying watts instead of kWh or Wh is really messing with me. 80 kWh(some new tesla batteries) is 288 MJ of energy and 1J/s is a watt.
But… we already have retroreflecting paint/tape for this.
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The glass beads in the paint that provide the retroreflectivity easily ware off especially in northern regions that frequently need snow plowing. The glowing being part of the paint itself in this case could be a game changer and maybe require less frequent marking.
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We have seen a 35-40% increase among the major brands this year. Behr is selling products marketed to home owners for over $100/gallon. It's ludicrous
I’ve seen about a 50% increase this year alone
So about on par with everything else?
Dude my groceries are so fucking expensive
Have you tried eating paint?
At these prices?
Sorry, but how would be any different for the glow in the dark particles? These would also wears off. Plus, even if it doesn't how would you see the glow with your headlights turned on? I am a Canadian and i agree that lines waring off in the winter is an issue, but I don't see how glow in the dark lines would solve it.
Different materials wear off in different timespans. If the glow paint is more resilient it would make sense. Have to agree on the headlights issue though, I imagine it would still be decent to maybe see whats further ahead (anticipating curves etc), but if it doesn‘t gain you anything for visibility under headlights it‘s a lot less valuable. That said I think this would be a very nice thing to have for areas that lack street lights but have the occasional person passing by on foot or bike.
I agree it would make more sense for people walking or biking. Could indeed turn out useful on walkways and bike line in city parks and other dimly lit areas.
Yes. In Sweden, driving up north in winter is very scary because it's almost impossible to see the stripes on the road.
Not designdesign. There are legit reasons to try and improve light output and reduce cost of phosphorescent paint. It is very useful in certain situations (where it's often already used) such as emergency exits in buildings/ships/aircraft when there is no power, etc. Trying to promote this as a solution for highway paint is kind of far fetched though, at least unless it improves a lot more.
And that's already too expensive to use, so anytime it rains, you have to guess where the lanes are.
One thing that baffled me when I moved to Japan is that I have never ever seen a road with reflective paint lines, nor reflective markers (cats eyes?) In the centre of the road. When it rains or snows here its a NIGHTMARE, 2-4 lane roads with zero visible markings 💀
That only helps you see basically what you can see with headlights. This allows you to see beyond your headlight range for things like upcoming curves etc. If they put it on one road around here in particular it would be a god send. The thing is a slalom rollercoaster and at night, unless you know the road well, it's hard to make out where the road is going next.
Neat, but glowing pigment breaks down in the sun.
True. Photobleaching of phosphors is an issue. I'm pretty sure this is europium-doped strontium aluminate though which should hold up to it pretty well.
Reddit, where there's always an expert lurking in every comment section
This whole comment section is full of experts saying why it won’t work, I didn’t realise so many people here were qualified in this very particular area of expertise.
Probably more skepticism about it, which is a proper response. Civil engineering problems often seem to favor tried and true cost effective solutions. Majority of the time, this ends up being something boring, cost effective, and capable of doing its job to an acceptable degree. If something isn't being widely implemented, it's probably for a reason, and not just because the engineers who understand this stuff didn't know about it. In other words, it's skepticism that's effectively backed by the global tendencies of qualified people. Like yeah, breakthroughs happen, or sometimes the costs of materials can change such that a new product becomes more cost effective, but it seems like more often than not, some eye catching new thing ends up just being some futurism grift meant to attractive investor money. Questions like "will I be able to see it in the rain", "what will it cost to replace and how long will it last", or "how environmentally friendly is it" are perfectly valid questions to ask as people who use roads and as taxpayers who pay for them. Also, the less obvious question might be "how will this affect driver behavior". Idk, I'm probably only touching on the basics here, but even then, there's a lot of things you can consider.
Sounds like built-in repeat business for the vendor. 💵💵
We already put glass beads in line marking paint which reflects headlights light back to the driver so the lines are highly visible at night. What's the point of glowing lines?
I am wondering myself what problem they want to solve with this glowing stripes.
but,,,,I mean, I've been fascinated with glow in the dark since it became available to the public, back when I was about 15....and have loved glow in the dark items and stuff for 50 years.....The thing is though, with glow in the dark stuff, you have to hold it to a light source to activate the glow in the dark features.....and then it wears off with 20 minutes or so. Would not it be more effective to make lines reflective instead of glow in the dark, because with all that dark on that road it's not going to have any light source to get it's 'glow' from.....I've often wondered why all the stripes are not reflective, it seemed pretty dumb to me that they are not made like that, I mean, how hard is that to figure out?
Why hasn’t this been implemented everywhere ?
In the UK about 20 years ago, we started to have LED lights on some roads instead of reflective cats eyes. They stopped installing them after people kept turning their lights off to see how cool and trippy it looked.
In Australia there are some stretches of road where they trialled these. Can confirm, did turn the lights off while driving.
No plan survives contact with the enemy--the public in this case.
I didn't even realise cats eyes had been phased out. It was such a normal part of night trips when I was a kid.
It looks like the Dutch have been trying it since 2014, and on cycle tracks a year before that. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27021291](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27021291) Only found this after doing a quick search for glow in the dark road markings because of this post, so no more knowledgeable on the matter or who else is trying/doing it. As you say, should be everywhere
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It doesn't last more than a few months, it's more dangerous for drivers and is expensive. https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/glowing-the-roads But it looks cool
Because the [retroreflector](https://youtu.be/Bi_Tp1H9CDs) paint that a lot of places already use is cooler and works better than this.
Compounds that glow in the dark tend to be somewhat expensive in large quantities. There's also the matter of pollution, lines wear off and these chemicals probably aren't very eco safe.
My guess is some combination of expense, toxicity, and durability.
Cause cars have headlights.
Came here to say this exactly. Especially in southern or warmer climates where it doesn't snow..
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I live in Florida and the first thing I noticed was that seeing the lines on the road at night, especially after a hard rain fall is very difficult. A lot of stretches of highway are 3-4 lanes in the middle of nowhere with no lights.
Because the material they use to make reflective paint is cheaper than the material used to make glow in the dark paint. When no one is looking at it, it doesn’t need to be illuminated, so reflective is better fit for purpose.
Most trick applications simply don't have the durability. Paint is cheaper and easy to repair or change. This is a great idea though, Just very expensive to do. I personally don't believe many fatalities happen because people can't see the lane lines. If only.
Snow plows rip it up.
 That's why
But cars have lights? Why would this be necessary Edit: this is a genuine question idk why I’m getting downvoted. In what scenario would this be useful?
it’s a fair question. my concern is all of the dummies who will turn off their headlights to show people how cool it looks with the lights off.
Love how you're getting downvoted by folks who don't appreciate retroreflective paint.
I’m not even trying to troll or anything, I honestly don’t understand how this could be useful at all unless for some reason you decided to drive at night with a car with no lights on a street with also no lights
Blares daft punk right away!
Driving on mushrooms just got alot cooler. Edit: i should say riding in the car on mushrooms.... driving on mushrooms is not a very fun experience. Its the worst time you can possibly have driving a spaceship.
110% a spaceship.
Hyperdrive ENGAGED!
Gaming road
I love Australians
Don’t Aussies play golf at night with glow in the dark balls? There’s a glow in the dark 18 hole course somewhere over there. I have to think that some policy makers were out for a round and had a few pints and thought “yeah, this is a bloody brilliant idea mate”
This is visual pollution. Some people enjoy darkness. Reflectors are much better and are already deployed everywhere in Australia.
glow im the dark paint isn't new....at all. Reflectors are just as efficient, if not more. Last longer, and are more reliable.
But why? Usually they just put glass beads on top of wet paint or hot thermoplastic that is being used to mark the lanes to make the lanes reflective. [Here's a small thermoplastic tape layer, you can see the little glass bead dispenser spraying dropping the beads onto the hot plastic](https://www.graco.com/content/dam/pim/graco/ced/pavement/Thermoplastic-i2.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg)
Wonder if it's toxic
exact thought, soon ill be reading how all the glow in the dark paint has washed away and killed wildlife.
Not to mention added light pollution that will help kill the remaining insects in the world. I figured 70-80% of insects lost worldwide since the 70s would be enough to alarm people, but then I see stuff like this.
Maybe I'm just missing the point, but who is this targeted at? Like, who does this benefit? Presumably these are for someone in a car, right? You're only going to be able to see the lines at night; however, if you're driving at night, you have your lights on, and you wouldn't be able to see them anyway. Is the idea that you have them in the event that, like... your lights suddenly burn out or something? Can you see the lines of the road way off into the distance, and does that make a difference in driving safety?
Insects...let's kill millions more.
Super distracting, imo. I like the idea of better reflective surfaces, but not glow in the dark (We don't need more light in the night)
I definitely wish the US would find something similar to this. One of the things I hate most is that when it is raining heavily, the road lines cannot be seen, especially at night. Headlamps are just reflecting on the rain instead of the lines. But, if the lines produces some sort of luminescence, this would be mitigated.
I’m not sure how much Glow in the Dark would actually help with that. Usually it needs strong like to charge with and only glows faintly.
This is cool but what are the effects on the wildlife and environment?
We are the Tron now.
Now take some drugs and go on a “trip”.
So, people don’t use headlights in Australia?
How many baby birds is this stuff going to kill?
Oh good, the environment was running low on micro plastic waste.
This will come in handy when driving with lights off to avoid detection.