Check Out These Amazing Glow In the Dark Roads Tested Now In The Netherlands

We are applying technology to every facet of human civilization. What if a road were more like a computer screen? This road design in the Netherlands is being prototyped and tested right now, as part of the Smart Highway Project as a way to create more sustainable and interactive highways, states the Gobal News.

Another similar project in road technology is called Starpath, which is a road surface that takes in light during the day, and glows at night. This is in response to city councils in the UK cutting power at night to conserve energy. The spray creates an illuminative surface on roads and sidewalks that restore much-needed light for pedestrians and motorists. 

Will these technologies be available in Canada? Over time they most likely will: who doesn't want to conserve energy and light roads at the same time. Given that these are very new technologies, it will take time to move from prototype to ubiquity--but not too much time, given the laws under which technological change emerges.

Another solution is Solar Freakin' Roadways: The use of solar panels to replace asphalt on the roads with energy regenerating, money saving, highly visible solar panels. As you see, the possibilities are endless.

We have seen a latency period in development of roadways; we've created countless more roads than at any other time in human history, but have put very little innovation into the actual 'stuff' of roads--what materials they're manufactured with, and how those materials respond to a panoply of environmental conditions and vice versa. We have created roads whose materials heat up the atmosphere, but do nothing with that wasted heat. Waste, according to the futurist Buckminster Fuller, is unharnessed energy. This is what these new road designs are attempting to solve, and it's very promising--unless legislative bureaucracies and myopic decision makers mess the whole thing up...