Auto-Carrier.com

This would never work in America, but apparently in Japan people don’t mind listening to the same thing as everyone else. Japanese engineers are working on a musical road surface. That’s right, the surface of the road will actually play you a little ditty as you zoom by at speeds that render the tune inaudible. The road works on the same concept of rumble strips: the surface creates a vibration, combine a series of different vibrations and voila’…a song.

Guardian.co.uk is reporting that:

There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan – one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Notice of an impending musical interlude, which lasts for about 30 seconds, is highlighted by coloured musical notes painted on to the road. According to reports, the system was the brainchild of Shizuo Shinoda, who accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer before driving over them and realizing that they helped to produce a variety of tones.

The idea sounds cute and all, but if I’m doing some auto transportation, that last thing I really want is a song vibrating up from out of no-where. The series of events goes like this as I see it: the song plays, I freak out, I veer off the road and slam head on into a school bus full of nuns. Do you really want that Shizuo Shinoda? …also, I don’t like Japanese pop music.