Skip to main content

High-viz' potholes innovation

Two Milan Polytechnic students, Domenico Diego and Cristina Corradini have designed the ‘Street Safe Initiative’, comprising a brightly coloured layer of asphalt a few centimetres beneath the surface of the road, which becomes visible when the road surface breaks up, making potholes easier to see and avoid.
February 2, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Two 578 Milan Polytechnic students, Domenico Diego and Cristina Corradini have designed the ‘Street Safe Initiative’, comprising a brightly coloured layer of asphalt a few centimetres beneath the surface of the road, which becomes visible when the road surface breaks up, making potholes easier to see and avoid.

The unique design will be trialled later this year in Rho, a small town close to Milan, to determine if the project is viable and cost-effective.

“We have compared the road surface to the human skin: when we are wounded, we start to bleed,” says Diego.

“So our idea is to put a layer of yellow asphalt beneath the tarmac, which appears and creates a high chromatic contrast that is visible from a distance. This way, the potholes are signalled as they appear and road users have enough time to react safely.”

Related Content

  • February 13, 2024
    Connected vehicles take modern spin on an old classic
    How do we transition the millions of vehicles on the world’s road to a connected and - one day - automated future? Andy Graham of White Willow Consulting highlights an intriguing pilot which sought to make some of the UK’s oldest vehicles connected – using just a phone
  • July 27, 2012
    Give offending drivers credit for good behaviour
    Andrew Rooke and Dave Marples of Technolution B.V. take a look at what can be done to address a long-standing problem: the all-or-nothing approach of automated enforcement. To start, a brief history of speeding: on 14 November 1896, the first Veteran Car Run was staged in England from London to Brighton. It was organised to celebrate new British legislation to raise the maximum speed of vehicles from four to 14mph while also removing the need for a person waving a red flag to walk in front of the car and wa
  • February 1, 2012
    Positive incentives an alternative to road user charging?
    The Netherlands has been looking at incentivising rush-hour avoidance. The intention is to better understand road users' motivations and find alternatives to congestion charging. Something significant needs to happen if we are to adequately address the traffic congestion and other issues caused by the ever-rising numbers of vehicles on our roads. Congestion or distance-based charging is seen as one way of managing demand and raising revenue for improvements to transport infrastructure. However, charging is
  • July 24, 2012
    Righter shade of pale
    Jon Tarleton, Quixote Transportation Technologies, Inc., talks about developments in mobile weather information gathering Quixote Transportation Technologies, Inc. (QTT) is promoting the greater use of mobile technologies to provide infill between fixed Road Weather Information System (RWIS) infrastructure. It is, the company says, a means of reducing the expense of providing comprehensive, network-wide coverage, particularly in geographic locations where the sheer number of centreline miles causes cost to