Evade the Road Noise
Posted by Jared

This is the best example of music literally being taken to the streets. Part of a Honda Civic promotional campain, this particaular stretch of an asphalt highway in Lancaster, California has been rythmically altered to produce the “William Tell Overture.”

When your vehicle travels at exactly 60 miles an hour over this road, you can hear the notes of this familiar tune from either inside the vehicle or in the nearby area. Apparently it has actually disturbed a few nearby neighbors having to hear it many times a day. It accomplishes this harmonic feat with half-inch-deep, one-inch wide grooves that have been notched into the asphalt at specific intervals so that a vehicle’s tires traveling over them produces various notes in the song. They are almost identical to the grooves located on the side of the road that might alert a sleepy driver from veering off the road. Never have they sounded so melodic though. This is only one of three such roads of its kind in the world and the only one of its kind in the United States. Similar singing roads are located in Anyang, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan where they were first engineered. Just why their next endeavor was in Lancaster, we may never know.

I highly recommend taking a drive down one of these roads if you ever get the chance. Take a quick look at the video for a demonstration.