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A road painting machine contains a laser level and takes measurements of slope every 100 feet or so to determine if the road slopes up or down. If it slopes downwards the machine paints that road segment a color at the green to blue end of the spectrum - the steeper the slope the more blue it will be.
Upward slopes will get painted orange to red colors - more red the steeper it gets.
A two way road will be painted approrpriate to the direction of travel. Downward blues and greens on one side, and upward oranges and reds on the other,
Anyone planning a trip will be able to look at satellite images and get a sense of the terrain without having to look at a topographical or ordnance survey map. Anyone coming onto the road without having checked the map first will see what they’re getting into - probably more useful for bicyclists than automobilists.
To honour Halfbakery traditions, the base coat for the paint will include some percentage of custard.
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I see a few potential problems... Cost most of all, but also the potential environmental concerns and I wonder if some folks who have color blindness might have a hard time seeing the lines painted on the road if it's a different color. |
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// folks who have color blindness might have a hard time seeing the lines painted on the road if it's a different color. // |
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Compared to unpainted pavement? |
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You mean the entire surface, or just the median stripe? I’d probably leave the median stripes bright white, with Bott’s Dots installed where needed. |
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Rather than painting the actual road, we could get the MapApp people to add this into displays. Since about 2010, computerized car displays show conventional map-type flat roads down which you, 'the Arrow', twist and bend, where all the grades are a surprise. Add in the colour code which shows the grade, and suddenly car maps are fun, relevant, and may even save your life, in the event of a recent event which created a 90º drop in the road. |
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How do we get the info to read the grade? Aggregate data from already extant exterior sensors on vehicles, satellites, and elevation detection on phones traveling through the region. |
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All sorts of humorous hijinx happen when a less-travelled road shows as a greyed-out 'Here Be Dragons' area of the map. |
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// Rather than painting the actual road // |
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But without paint, we have no excuse to apply the custard! |
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I admit colorizing maps in driving apps is more practical, but painting the road surfaces themselves appealed to me in a far-fetched halfbacked public art project kind of way. |
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And when I'm out riding my bike I'm not looking at a map. |
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Off-grid bike rides without attached phone/map--how quaint and old-school! <so, I'm not the only one who drives a pre-computerized car and completely fails to bring any tech on my pedal-bike rides, hmm> |
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// Off-grid bike rides without attached phone/map // |
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Not entirely. Apple Watch supplies both phone and mapping as needed, I just don't have it in my face when I'm riding. |
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If you go too fast you will be subjected to BlueShift. |
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Google tells me that "to observe such a change in color, the object would have to be traveling at approximately 5,200 km/s, or about 32 times faster than the speed record for the fastest space probe." |
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And now - by quoting verbatim that caption from a Wikipedia illustration - this idea will also turn up in some searches for redshift. Thanks! |
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[+] I lost some of my color perception in my right eye, and now every once in while find myself solving the rubics cube wrongly. So it wouldn't be very useful for me. And then all the practical problems. |
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But painting the roads on waze and google maps should be an easy task. Then all you need to do is ride your bicycle with Google Lens. |
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