Netherlands highways will glow in the dark from mid-2013
The studio has developed a photo-luminising powder that will replace road markings — it charges up in sunlight, giving it up to ten 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 manufacture 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.
Interesting idea, but are the Netherlands the best place for rolling this out given the country’s high latitude and cloudy winters?
Would there be enough sunshine in the winter to charge up the paint when it is really needed? The Sun sets before 4pm in December, which means even fully charged paint would be dark before 2 in the morning.
A place like California with lots of sunshine and more moderate fluctuations in daylight seems a much better location?