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Design

Glow In The Dark Roads Bring Radioactive Beauty To Night Drives

Thanks to Studio Roosegaarde, the roads of the future will be brightened with smart glow-in-the-dark paint.

Designers in the Netherlands finally executed a plan to light up their roads with bright green, luminescent paint, rather than expensive street lights. Studio Roosegaarde proposed the futuristic Smart Highway design back in 2012, but struggled with Dutch bureaucrats throughout the project's implementation. Now that they've crossed every t and dotted every i, Studio Roosegaarde's dream of gorgeous, eco-friendly, energy-efficient lighting for the night time driver is a reality—and a surreal one at that. A local Netherlands reporter even said that the Smart Highway "looks like you're driving through a fairytale."

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Studio Roosegaarde has been working with the Heijmans paint company to develop extra strength glow in the dark paint with, which looks like pure plutonium streaking across the darkened landscape. The roads are treated with "foto-luminizing powder" which gets its energy from the sun and illuminate the road at night.

The design group has only been allowed to transform 500 meters of Dutch roads into the Smart Highway, but they have big plans for the future. Short term, they're seeking permission to lay down their plutonium-hued paint on more of the Netherlands' roads, but long term they've imagined even smarter roads, which might respond and interact with factors such as the time of day, the weather, or anything else Daan Roosegarde can imagine.

You can check out the alien beauty of the Smart Highway in the photos below.

H/T to Wired

For more on Studio Roosegaarde see:

Netherlands To Get "Smart Highways" In 2013

New Project Cleans The Smog Out Of China And Turns It Into Jewelry

User Preferences: Tech Q&A With Interactive Designers Studio Roosegaarde