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.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Visa and the power of mass transit transactions
    April 22, 2020
    Contactless payment is the hidden power behind efficient public transportation. Visa’s Ana Reiley tells Adam Hill why buying a latte should be a model for frictionless ticketing 
  • Slow moving US road user charging programme
    July 18, 2012
    Bern Grush recently attended the Mileage-Based User Fee Conference in Austin Texas where the fledgling American landscape for Road User Charging is beginning to take shape. When I was a kid I liked to poke sticks into the ants' nests in sidewalk cracks. Ants would scatter in every conceivable direction. They ran in circles, they ran over and through each other. They screamed without logic. I was fascinated.
  • The rise and rise of robo-car
    July 23, 2019
    When it comes to driverless cars, there are many variables – but one thing is for certain: autonomous driving will have a significant impact on vehicle design, says Andreas Herrmann The transition to autonomous vehicles (AVs) means that many of the factors which have shaped automotive design for the past 130 years no longer apply. At present, the design of a car is largely determined by the anticipated direction of travel: the car’s silhouette immediately shows where the front and back are. Driverless ve
  • Truck platooning: the evidence is complex
    February 6, 2020
    A number of claims are made for the value of truck platooning. David Crawford looks at the figures from a new set of examples which suggest that the situation is more complex than you might think