jalopnik.com: Despite the multiple embarrassingly failed attempts to get Honda’s Singing Road right, a village in the Netherlands tried to find a cultural solution to distracted driving by installing musical rumble strips along a roadway. It only took villagers a couple of days to demand the noise be stopped, labeling it “psychological torture.”
1 comment:
The concept of using something like music in a creative way to solve a problem as rampant as distracted driving seems like a pretty good idea, and I can see why the town pursued it as an option. But reading the article, it's also clear that it wasn't thought all the way through. The article said that they were surprised that putting a song on the road caused people to "speed up and aim for the strips rather than slowing down", but because the landmark was such an attraction and a gimmick rather than something more negative, it (in hindsight) seems like an obvious reaction that people would want to try the strips for themselves and hear the song. I like the idea, and I appreciate that they are still trying to make rumble strips a little more enjoyable and positive and not abandoning the project altogether, but it definitely needs tweaking and working to make it good not only for the drivers but also for the communities around the roads, too. It's too easy to forget about the people near projects until they are complete and causing problems, and needs to be considered before installation rather than after a problem is discovered.
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