Glow-In-The-Dark Markings Are Drawing Attention On The Highway & Social Media

Luminescent lane markings are lighting up the roads at night in Australia as a company performs a “trial run” to test how glow-in-the-dark paint could help make driving at night safer.

The images of the blacked-out highway with greenish-blue lines lining the asphalt went viral earlier this week with almost 100,000 shares on Facebook, according to News.com.au.

These attention-grabbing dividers were created by a road construction firm from Victoria, Australia, Tarmac Linemarking. After the company had just received funding from the government, it was given the all-clear to paint over markings on a 0.6-mile stretch in Victoria.

The coating, like glow-in-the-dark paint in children’s toys, absorbs light during the day and releases it at night, creating a glowy effect that makes the road feel like it is straight out of a video game or the sci-fi realm of TRON, as one Facebook user pointed out.

Aside from turning the streets into a futuristic neon stretch of highway, the new photoluminescent lines also better illuminate signs, intersections, and curves, along with lane dividers.

While the idea of driving down these TRON-style lanes feels like a fun prospect, there is still not much known about the long-term effects of the coating.

Firstly, a spokesperson who spoke to News.com.au in an interview said that the markings work best during a sunny day and can last through “most of the night.” However, there is no word now on how it works on darker and cloudier days. As such, there is concern over what it might look like during dusk & dawn when animals are most likely to linger around the edges of the traffic paths.

Secondly, there is the question of wear and tear and how the run-offs of the markings affect the environment.

All things considered, it might take a while before such road treatments are rolled out on a larger scale. Futurism foresees that it will be limited to specific areas such as dangerous stretches of vehicular lanes, bicycling and pedestrian pathways.

[via Futurism and News.com.au, cover image via Tarmac Linemarking]