Musical roads: how does music appear on the road surface

Tired drivers who spend several hours on the road and fall asleep while driving often become the culprits of traffic accidents. In order to prevent falling asleep and cheer up drivers, engineers came up with musical roads that can be found today in some countries of the world.

The date of the appearance of the first musical road is considered to be 1995, when a road called Asphalttophone was built in Denmark. Before the construction of such a masterpiece of engineering, a thorough plan is drawn up, without which it is impossible to guarantee the successful implementation of the idea.

Musical sections of roads emit melodic sounds while driving. Parallel grooves, which are located at a certain distance from each other, are applied to the road section. When a car travels through these small grooves, a vibration occurs that sounds like a melody. The sound that arises depends not only on the distance between the bands, but also on the depth of these grooves, and with a certain effort, you can create a musical path that reproduces a rather complex melody.

The beginning of a musical road is often indicated by the symbol of a musical treble clef or notes, and this is one of the musical roads in Japan.

Today, musical roads exist in China, the USA, Denmark, South Korea and Japan, where the largest number of such highways are located. But, like most innovations, the musical roads found their opponents. For example, residents of one of the cities in the Netherlands were very unhappy with the “music” that constantly came from a nearby highway. After numerous complaints, the road had to be dismantled.

Not without curiosities. For example, a musical road located in the US state of California, although designed to cheer up and cheer up drivers, causes a slightly different feeling. It turns out that during its construction mistakes were made, so the road "plays" a fake melody.