Invention Could Prove Illuminating for American Drivers

Nighttime driving may soon get a bit safer. Though driving at night is a casual, mundane part of our everyday lives, it does bring with it much greater risk than daytime driving due to obvious visibility limits. The British company Astucia is trying to change all that.

The company has invented a SolarLite road stud, which could replace conventional reflective road studs. Where the current stud simply illuminates the road by bouncing back cars’ headlights, the SolarLite stores the sun’s energy during the day to provide illumination throughout the night via small light emitting diodes (LED). This can increase visibility from a typical 90 meters (sorry, the Brits were doing the measurements) to nearly 900 meters. To put this in terms of reaction time, that’s a difference of having to react in 3.2 seconds versus 30 seconds when driving 60 mph.

The LED studs have been deployed along 120 stretches of road in the United Kingdom, and Astucia said local authorities have reported a 70% decrease in nighttime accidents. If the difference were even half that, the benefits of lining American roads with SolarLite studs would be well worth the cost.

Solar-Powered LED Road Markers Could Light Future Roadways (Autoblog.com)

Comments

I agree with one posters comments on the link that those LEDs may grow tiresome if you had to look at them all the time. However, I do think they'd be a fantastic idea on "dangerous" parts of the road. Perhaps they should use less solarlite road studs and/or space them out greater than they do in those photos. Mix them in with the normal road reflectors too. It'd save money yet still be effective.

I'd like to see a close up picture of the actual solarlite road stud to see how big they are. My main concern is if they are big blocks/round dots that stick up out of the pavement then they could be dangerous for motorcyclists. They might not cause any problems for motorcyclists when traveling in a straight line but if they ran over one while leaning in a corner it could cause a wreck.

90 meters = 0.06 miles = 295.28 feet

900 meters = 0.56 miles = 2952.76 feet

Just a side note, I believe the British uses mph too.
But other than that, I think the rest of the world uses metric.

They seem very useful. Having just two days ago driven on a tiny spare tire on a poorly lit road, subpar windshield wipers wiping slushy snow, and a defogger barely defogging...they would have been welcoming.

They work. It is that simple. I have driven along a road where they were installed with one of my friends (the said thing Civil Engineers get up to in their spare time...). It is very relaxing and takes a lot of the strain of nighttime driving away.

Don't know if the government will introduce them throughout the whole country though. On my current project (trunk road widening)we are definatively not using them.

I too hope that they aren't too big and sticking up out of the roadway. I'd hate to be worrying about constantly running over those things everytime I got close to the line, could cause flats. And yes it could be dangerous to motorcyclists IF they do indeed stick up out of the roadway.

Playing with advanced gardening I had a sort of scientific discovery in hydrodynamics: http://revver.com/watch/162737

One question: Is it bright enough to blind the motorists or distract them?

While these would be great at showing you where the road goes they fail to illuminate anything that might in the road i.e.: an animal, person, or debris. Late one night on a California highway, that has conventional road studs, I was riding home on my motorcycle while I could see the reflective road studs a few hundred feet ahead of me I didn't see a huge roll of carpet that was in my lane until it was about 40 feet in front of me. I didn't have time to avoid it and ended up running it over. Luckily I didn’t crash but it did make me notice I was going too fast for the conditions at the time.

My point is this little gadget goes in the same category as ABS, traction and stability control. It will allow unskilled jackasses to drive faster because they think the technology will save them from any mistakes.

How is this any different than "glow in the dark" plastic? Besides being more expensive of course (trust the government to create a $5 solution to a 10 cent problem)

It would be nice if state and federal government install reflectors on all roads. I see roads repaved in black pavement with poorly painted lines all the time. I personally feel white cement is better than black pavement for visiblity at night. I think people forget that some people drive older vehicles that do not have the nice blind the other car headlights installed. This has been one of my pet prives forever.