Japanese engineers develop roads that play music

Motorists in Japan will soon be singing to a different tune. Japanese engineers recently announced their newest invention, a musical surface for the countries roads. The road uses the motorist’s cars as tuning forks to play a tune, which is laid out on the road in a series of well placed grooves. As the cars fly over the lumps and bumps created by the grooves the vibrations create a tune in the car.

However, you don’t need to worry about having to listen to annoying, music box melodies for the whole journey. The bumps are laid out so that the road only plays a thirty second snippet of a song. The roads are also clearly labeled with colourful music notes to let drivers know to expect musical roads ahead.

Although it seems like a great idea, the possibilities aren’t exactly endless. Each road will, presumably, only be able to play one tune. This could spell trouble for businesses in the future. Drivers will, no doubt, get sick of hearing the same thirty seconds of a once popular pop song everytime they drive up the road to go to the hairdressers.

Some people have complained that going either too fast or too slow on the musical roads has tendency to make them feel a little bit sick. Going too fast sounds like you’re listening to a song on fast forward and hence, makes you a bit dizzy, too slow and the song plays in super slow motion, making motorists feel a little bit carsick.

One nice thing is that you can’t really hear the music if you roll down the windows and turn up the stereo.