OneAndOneIs2

School term has started again. This means that the traffic is a nightmare on my route to work again. Stuck in my car waiting for idiots to stop blocking the road, I have a fair amount of time to think about things.

I was thinking about the Solar Roads project again recently. Executive summary: They propose a "next-generation" road, made up of solar panels. They reckon America alone would generate almost enough power to supply the entire planet's energy needs. But it's the other aspects and possibilities that I find most interesting.

Being large solar panels, the roads are basically transparent, so LEDs can be embedded in them to replace the painted lines we currently use for lane markings & replace the reflective studs for better night visibility. They've talked about how this would allow for changing road markings for accidents, roadworks, etc. But I don't think they've taken it far enough.

For instance, what if the dotted white lines that mark lanes weren't static? What if instead they moved along the road at exactly the speed limit of that stretch of road? Then you would always be able to drive to, or within, the speed limits; even if you missed a speed limit sign and without having to keep taking your eyes off the road to look at your speedo.

Plus it would be instantly apparent to anybody when anybody was breaking the speed limit; which studies indicate would stop people doing it so much. So drivers would go slower and pay more attention to the roads, and safety is improved.

You could go further: Even simple sensors built into the road surfaces would allow it to know what traffic was going over it. It could alert you when you were too close to the car in front by putting a warning on the road, like a big double-headed arrow, <-->, between you and the car in front, telling you to increase the distance.

You could go further still: If all roads are electric, it should be child's play to incorporate technology that would finally allow a car to drive itself: The roads would tell the car where it could drive, sensors that already exist keep the car a safe distance from obstacles on the road - other cars & pedestrians. You could finally have self-driving cars, safely and reliably, removing human problems like alcohol, inattention, and impatience. That means you wouldn't need speed bumps, or other so-called traffic-calming measures that just annoy people. You also lose those annoying people who drive slowly, sit at junctions forever waiting for some kind of sign from God before pulling out, and generally hold up other traffic: Everybody goes as fast as legally allowed, as quickly as possible. So we all get to where we're going faster. And therefore cheaper.

Go even further: The electric roads are modular, made up of 'tiles' all linked together. If a tile is built with a unique ID, and the ability to 'talk' to the tiles connected to them, then you have a huge amount of functionality available almost for free: If every tile knows what tiles it's connected to, and those tiles know what THEY'RE connected to, and so on.. then you get a road network that knows its own layout, and this layout gets updated automatically when changes are made.

So you no longer need a GPS to get from A to B; your navigation software no longer needs to rely on maps that are always going out of date. Your car is on a road, the road tells your car where it is and also tells it all available routes to its destination. And also tells it how fast traffic is moving on each route, so your car can always get you to your destination the fastest possible route.

Plus, since these are solar roads, and so generate & deliver power to each house, and (let's face it) all houses are connected to roads; and since they already need to be able to transmit power & data, it only makes sense that phone, electricity, and any other cables that need to come to your house, do so via the road - no phone masts, no electricity pylons, no more overhead cables getting knocked out every time there's a strong wind. Naturally, all those cable connections would be best managed by the same type of built-in mechanisms that allow a road tile to know where it is and what it's connected to.

So not only would this kind of road have built-in knowledge of the road layout; it would also have built-in knowledge of all the houses that are connected to the road. So you really could put a specific house address into your car's navigation system and it would tell you the definitive best route to get there.

And the beauty of it is, the whole system is self-generating and self-maintained. You don't have armies of bureaucrats in dozens of different departments collating data and making mistakes: Road tiles know what other road tiles they're connected to, and what houses they link to; and from this the entire country's infrastructure can be extrapolated.

Build a new housing estate, and as soon as your new houses are connected to new streets that connect to an existing road.. they immediately become part of the system and thus the road knows about them and your car can use them.

What's more, a 'sensitive' tile would be aware when it became damaged and report cracks or potholes as soon as they happen. And being modular tiles, repairs would be accomplished in minutes by replacing a damaged tile with a new one, instead of having to dig up and resurface the road. And a simple heating system to melt surface ice in winter would make a massive difference in temperate countries where you get snow and frosts every year. Intelligent, self-lit roads would be safer for pedestrians, even able to do things like alert you when a car is approaching from the other side of a blind bend.

And none of this is science-fiction: All the technologies exist already; most have existed for years. If something as simple as the humble tarmac road were re-imagined with today's technology, you get something amazing: An LED-illuminated, dynamic, computerised, self-mapping transport network that would solve the world's energy problems, make the roads faster and more efficient whilst also making them safer; and still have an overall cost that's less than the existing tarmac.

The impact such a system would have on the world is literally bigger than we can imagine. And that's just from modernizing one single, simple, ubiquitous aspect of the modern world: The simple road.

Never mind imagining what technology might be able to accomplish in 50 years time: Imagine what it could do RIGHT NOW if we started applying it to more than smartphones and toys; and upgraded things that have been unchanged for so long that we've forgotten that maybe they could work a different way.

If you can re-imagine a road to have such a massive impact on our lives, what would we get if we re-imagine a car? A railway? A garden? An airport? A house?

Makes you think, doesn't it..?