FRIDAY FUNNY: Special rumble strips create melodies as cars travel over them. PLUS – video
A new “musical road” has opened in Hungary and plays a few notes from a traditional folk song as drivers whizz along.
The updated section of Road 37 in the north-east of the country was unveiled last month and has been engineered so motorists get to hear the song “Erik a szolo”, or “The grapes are getting ripe”. You can hear it by playing the video below.
Special rumble strips have been installed on the route and the friction between the surface and tyres plays a perfect tune if driving at 80kph. If vehicles are going faster or slower, the melody will be imperfect or distorted.
Hungary’s first musical road opened in the southern Somogy county in 2019 and plays a song by a Hungarian rock band over a stretch of 500m.
Other tuneful roads can be found in Denmark, Japan, South Korea, the US, China, Iran, Taiwan and Indonesia. While most countries have chosen music with some local connection, a section of road in Java, Indonesia, plays the first six notes of “Happy Birthday to You”.
It makes you wonder what tune New Zealand officials would choose if a similar road was built here. If sticking with the local theme, maybe drivers would get to hear Pātea Māori Club’s Poi E or Dave Dobbyn’s Slice of Heaven while behind the wheel.
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