Music is usually a good travel companion when we go by car. Almost all of us have the habit of tuning in to a musical radio formula or playing our favorite songs when we get behind the wheel. It is something we do, especially when we have to travel hundreds of kilometers on roads and highways, where the environment is usually very monotonous and it is very easy for us to lose concentration. Music activates us and makes us pay attention to what is happening on the road, thus avoiding distractions that can cause accidents.
Music can also be a very useful tool to get drivers moving at the right speed. The traffic authorities of some countries around the world know this very well, which have designed roads that emit musical sounds when the car passes through them with the aim of reducing road departures and frontal or frontal-lateral collisions due to invasion of traffic. lane.
They are those roads that have sound guides strategically placed on the asphalt that emit musical chords when a vehicle passes over them. Its operation is based on one of the basic principles of musical language, intervals. The road is designed with different sequences of intervals forming small grooves in the asphalt with a variable width, explains Sulponticello. While the narrow grooves increase the pitch or height, the wider grooves lower it for deeper bass tones.
The vibrations generated by the car when it drives over these guides is what makes the road become a musical instrument. However, to listen to the melody offered by the road we will have to drive at the correct speed. Otherwise we will not hear the melody.
Traffic experts design this type of road to improve road safety, generally in the most conflictive sections. By having to drive at a certain speed to hear the melody, it is intended to avoid inappropriate speed. In this way, the chances of having an accident due to road departures or frontal or frontal collisions are reduced.
The detractors of this measure criticize that when driving regularly on these roads, the tires suffer greater wear, especially when the music is achieved through the cracks in the asphalt. They also consider that it is necessary to frequently repair the ruts in the road to prevent them from going 'out of tune', which entails an additional economic expense.
The first stretch of road of these characteristics was built in 1995 in Denmark, specifically in the Danish town of Gylling. Danish artists Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus dubbed it Asfaltophone, an arpeggio in F major, which sounds when cars drive over small circular bumps similar to soundtracks.
In this Central European country we find a musical route in memory of the singer of the group Republic Laszlo Bodi. Some rough transverse bands allow you to listen to a 30-second excerpt from the song Road 67, which is located precisely on Highway 67 between the towns of Mernyeszentmiklos and Mernye, heading south.
Honda designed a musical highway in the Californian state of Lancaster (United States), in 2008, as part of an advertising campaign for the Japanese brand. The chords that sounded corresponded to the final part of the overture to Guillermo Tell, by Gioachino Rossini, although the tuning is certainly not very well achieved. The 'chords' of the piece had to be relocated to another road with less traffic in an industrial estate and the original road was repaved.
Route 66, undoubtedly the most famous in the United States and which runs from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, also has a musical stretch where 'America the Beautiful' sounds, that is, the national anthem of the North American country. The stretch is located between the towns of Albuquerque and Tijeras in the state of New Mexico.
One of the largest car-producing countries in the world has at least one music highway. It is located in the city of Anyang, south of Seoul, and in one of the sections the children's song 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' is played. Unlike other music lanes designed in other countries, the South Korean traffic authorities have created this road with the purpose of keeping drivers attentive. Not surprisingly, 68% of traffic accidents in South Korea are due to distractions, according to official sources.
In Japan, there are about 30 music roads that play tunes from the national culture. One of the most outstanding is located on the road that leads to Mount Fuji, which at 3,776 meters high, is the highest mountain in Japan. For 30 seconds it is possible to listen to the melody of 'Fuji no Yama', a traditional song about the famous Mt.
The idea of installing some rough musical bands on a stretch of road in the Dutch town of Jelsum where the anthem of the Friesland region was played when cars were driving at 60 km/h did not go well. It is not that the music was reproduced in a defective way, but that the inconvenience it caused to the neighbors forced the authorities to back down and remove the soundtracks. "The anthem is very good, but not to listen to it 24 hours a day," a neighbor complained to the RTL news portal. A few days later, the road was paved again.
