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.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Truck platooning trials take to the highways
    July 24, 2017
    There is rising enthusiasm in America and beyond for the concept of truck platooning with trials being planned in several US states, as David Crawford reports. Growing numbers of US states are considering or implementing plans for trials of electronically-linked truck platooning on public road networks. This is in response to the interest being shown by the US$70bn a year road freight industry, where fuel represents 41% of the operating costs making the prospect of improving fuel economy by trucks travellin
    Read More
  • New York pioneers online mobile real-time bus tracking
    May 22, 2012
    An unusual technology collaboration. David Crawford investigates Early in January 2012, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) rolled out the first borough-wide implementation of its pioneering Bus Time online mobile real-time tracking service. The system allow commuters to track each bus on every route in real-time on the internet, via smartphones and by text messaging to a mobile phone. The MTA chose Staten Island for its first live launch due to it being the only one of the five Ne
    Read More
  • Options abound for road weather sensing
    September 6, 2017
    Meteorological organisations invest millions in super-computers to crunch data for ever-more accurate forecasts but inherent unpredictability means that other methods of alerting drivers and road authorities to fast-changing weather and highway conditions are essential. For years, static weather sensors to measure factors such as surface water, ice or high roadway temperatures have been embedded in highways to provide such data. But that is changing.
    Read More
  • Forward thinking beats rear-guard action
    April 20, 2016
    In terms of vision, joined-up thinking and exploiting the potential of ITS, the authorities in Riyadh are showing how it should, and can, be done (see page 52). Faced with a fast-growing population and ever-increasing congestion, the city’s authorities decided the situation required a solution beyond the gains that can be made by deploying ITS alone, so it is adding a metro – a completely new travel mode.
    Read More

Highlighted Content