Oh Bollards!

I hadn't realised that they didn't have cat's eyes in the US, they are a brilliant safety device particularly in poor weather.

There's some tests here now with cat's eyes with led's in them: (some even solar powered)

Ah, Oakington...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLa-x9ZZsaA
(should really be in the best videos thread I suppose)

ha, many country roads here have no cats eyes. Makes for a fun bit of night time driving!

It struck me after I posted that you'd need a heck of a lot of cat's eyes to get from sea to shining sea!

In the rain on Ontario (Canada) roads you'd be lucky to see any stripes or markings on the pavement, whether you're driving on a lit or unlit road. This is a huge disappointment. For the relatively high taxes we pay, our roads are now at the level commonly associated with the US in the 80's and 90's - that is to say, significant disrepair. I'd have no problem believing there is some outright collusion between the paving companies and select individuals in provincial and/or municipal government.

I'd love to see any type of reflector integrated into the pavement, but I also realize that many solutions would pose a problem for snow plows in the Winter months.

I seem to recall that, in Ontario at least, there was a deliberate policy of not marking roads very well. The rationale was that good, easy to see, unambiguous road markings encourage faster driving, and therefore more accidents! If the roads are badly lit and marked, people have to drive much more slowly, therefore it's safer. There was something on TV about this a few years back in a program on different road standards around the world.

I must say that I can't really agree with this logic. Remembering driving around Belleville, where my family used to live, during winter nights, you certainly saw plenty of locals roaring around at 50-60 miles an hour on roads where you could barely see the lane markings on a sunny day, never mind at night when it was snowing The lack of markings didn't seem to make them slow down at all.

On the other hand, the 401 highway, which by UK terms is a fairly good dual carriageway with wider-than-normal lanes seemed to inspire fear and awe in most of the local inhabitants, where a UK driver would just drive happily and safely down it at 80MPh. Going this slowly, of course, because it was after all a different country with different rules

It was always amusing to hear it described as packed, when in UK terms it was practically empty. Packed is three lanes of traffic doing 70+ four feet apart on the M3, not two lanes of 55-60 traffic with two hundred meter gaps between vehicles.

Despite that, we seem to get a lot less accidents in the UK than I saw in Ontario on a per mile basis. Florida, on a trip there a few years ago, was almost unbelievably worse from that point of view, and even less traffic as well.

pca

We also have a well fed highway lobby to make sure the $$ keeps flowing onto those roads.

-Zeke

Oh, and FWIW old-style cats eyes are dying out in the UK and are being replaced with chuncks of plastic. Whether this is down to cost saving or design, who knows.

I've seen uninstalled samples of the Bot's Dots both the round and reflector versions. They are thin enough, and flexible enough that you can fold them in half by hand. What makes them robust it the dollop of adhesive that fills it. I'd bet that dollop of adhesive costs more than the reflector.

The other thing about Bot's Dots is the speed at which they are installed. A specially fitted truck runs down the road at near freeway speeds pasting them down. And they are proof against traffic immediately.

Also they are not installed everywhere in the US. One of my remote cousins, after seeing them for the first time, asked if the local winter fogs were why they were installed.

I know this stretch of the A12 because my TomTom tried to direct me to make an illegal turn to go to the village of Capel St. Mary: Maybe that's why it's an accident black spot!

Not seen them on my section of the A12.