Motorists used to listening to the radio or their favourite tunes on CDs may have a new way to entertain themselves, after engineers in Japan developed a musical road surface.
A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of "melody roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.
The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.
Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, enabling cunning designers to create a distinct tune.
Patent documents for the design describe it as notches "formed in a road surface so as to play a desired melody without producing simple sound or rhythm and reproduce melody-like tones".
There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan - one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Notice of an impending musical interlude, which lasts for about 30 seconds, is highlighted by coloured musical notes painted on to the road. According to reports, the system was the brainchild of Shizuo Shinoda, who accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer before driving over them and realising that they helped to produce a variety of tones.
The designs were refined by engineers at the institute in Sapporo. The team has previously worked on new technologies including the use of infra-red light to detect dangerous road surfaces.
But motorists expecting to create their own hard rock soundtrack could find themselves struggling to live the dream. Not only is the optimal speed for achieving melody road playback a mere 28mph, but locals say it is not always easy get the intended sound.
"You need to keep the car windows closed to hear well," wrote one Japanese blogger. "Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car sick."
Now engineers in South Korea and Japan have one-upped the rumble strip by creating "singing" highways.
Also known as melody roads, these new thoroughfares use cars, specifically their tires, as tuning forks to play music as they barrel along. The musical roads are created by a series of grooves, cut at very specific intervals, in the surface of the asphalt.
Much like the vibrations and rumbles produced on a bumpy or poorly maintained street, engineers discovered that different notes were produced when grooves were placed at certain intervals along the surface. Depending on how far apart the grooves are, tires moving over them produce a series of high or low notes, enabling designers to create a distinct tune.
With 68 percent of highway accidents in Korea caused by inattentive, sleeping or speeding drivers, the Korean Highway Corp., as well as the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute in Japan, came up with the idea of musical road surfaces to keep motorists entertained but also to reduce their speed and help them stay alert.
Referring to a particularly treacherous section of South Korea's singing highway, Seung-Hwan Shin, manager of the Korean Highway Corp., said, "That place is in a downhill, S-curved road, so there's been lots of accidents from dozing and speeding."
Shin, along with other Korean highway officials, hope these new roads significantly reduce the number of accidents caused by distracted drivers every year.
But creating these singing streets isn't easy. It takes thousands of grooves carved into a road to create even one song. Shin said construction for one song took four days. On Korean highways, the song of the streets is the simple, yet sweet "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
Transforming those vibrations into a melody, however, depends on the distance between the grooves, which may vary between 5.3 centimeters and 10.6 centimeters. The rhythm, on the other hand, is controlled by the length of the groove. For example, to get one second of the C, or "do" note, the groove must be stretched to 28 meters.
Civic Musical Road ( California )
Originally created for a Honda commercial in September 2008, the Civic Musical Road consists of strategically placed grooves that, when driven over, produce the musical notes to the finale of Rossini's "William Tell Overture."
Located in Lancaster, California, the original road was constructed on Avenue K, but city officials paved over it 18 days later due to noise complaints from the nearby neighbors. It was reported that the neighbors were also sick of the "crazy behavior" of some of the drivers.
The road was rebuilt on Avenue G in October 2008 and remains there to this day. The new location is two miles away from any residential areas, therefore presenting less problems for the locals. Visitors who wish to hear the musical piece must stay in the far left lane of the three-lane road. Though many drivers have tried the road at multiple speeds, it is said that driving at 55mph provides the optimal sound quality. Incidentally, 55pmh is also the posted speed limit.
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