Gizmodo

That's great.

pretty sure the novelty would wear off after about 5 seconds of mind numbing vibrations

I remember when this concept was originally floated...I also remember one particularly good comment:

somebody suggested that the tune should be tailored to the area you were driving through -- for example, the roads in gang-infested cities could play the ominous Wicked Witch theme.

If I drove through at 120mph, would it sound like The Minutemen?

What was that supposed to sound like?

I feel sorry of their hands :(

Has the radio not gotten to Japan yet?

Cars have been making music for years. It's called an exhaust note.

@CafeRacer1200:

Nah, I'd say the Chipmunks.

Yet another opportunity for snazzy marketing. Can't get that new McD's commercial jingle outta yer head? Well, maybe if your road to work plays the Wendy's tune, you'll end up asking for a side of baked potato instead of supersize fries. I'm guessing many companies are run by people stupid enough to pay for the right to do this. OMG, just had a GREAT idea! If they'll buy into this, we could make them pay to fix up the portion of roadway this crap is put into :^) Just offer up sections of road that suck derriere, and tell 'em to fix it before putting the bumpies down. That way the roads would get fixed REALLY fast, I'm guessing. Damn, there's sections of road in SoCal that have been 'under construction' for freakin' years!

@rockboy04:
rofl

those crazy japanese, what will they come up with next?

This happened accidentally on a road in our neighborhood. The repaved surface had ridges and with my dad's sport tires, it makes very audible tones. They're better than in this video tho because they are much higher, so they actually sound like a real instrument. We always thought it would be cool to make music out of it.

after driving on these types of road sufaces its get to be really annoying esp at really high speeds. even if your not driving on the bumps but the passenger next to you is its just really noisy and loud

A novel approach in getting drivers to think about their speed. Here in the states of course they use those roadside digital displays to show your speed and all I can think about is getting the high score.

In the US we have trouble keeping our bridges standing and in Japan they're spending they're money on this. Oh how the tables have turned....

Apparently Disney did this back in the 80s...

"Well, the guys at WDI reportedly discovered that -- if you set up different raised areas of asphalt along a roadway at very specific intervals -- as you drove a wheeled vehicle in the right direction over this specially treated section of road, the vibrations that would then resonate inside the vehicle would almost sound like music.

As the story goes, the Imagineers allegedly used the 2000 foot long airstrip at the old Lake Buena Vista STOLport to field test this musical-speed-bump idea. And -- to this day -- I've had WDW bus drivers swear to me that they actually took part in the field trials of this project. And that -- were you to begin rolling down that old runway at at least 20 MPH -- the vibrations that you heard inside your vehicle sounded just like the opening bars of "Zip a Dee Doo Dah." "

From: [jimhillmedia.com]

hmmm, to me it sounds like somebody farting a symphony...

@nospamsam: reminds me of the annoying thing they have at O-Hare airport... they have those ridges, but the ones at the airport just produce nasty vibration...

Well all that is to me is more sound pollution. If I drove on that I would be super annoyed.

I guess that was noteworthy.

I would say your judgment is sound!

@CafeRacer1200: toy dolls

Great, not I have to replace my tires after 5k miles

@strider_mt2k: Uuuuugggggggghhhhh

Won't that shit wear your tyres quicker?

you know this is pretty clever.

If you're a driver who cares about not getting a speeding ticket, and never remember to look at the speed limit sign, you can instantly tell whether or not you'd be speeding according to whether or not your song is playing too fast.

An easy way to remind yourself that perhaps you could be going a bit fast.

I think I remember seeing this on a show about cars where the Swedes invented this in order to force people to go the correct speed--go too fast, the song would become 'unbearable' and cause you to slow down.

This is great until you run in to traffic... literally.

I would speed up and slow down to screw with the pitches I hear as well as ruin everyone else's musical experience driving behind me muahaha.

we have the same thing in the US on most of our main highways now....they're used on the outside of the far left and far right lanes. they're intended to wake a sleeping driver

@RedBeard:
Now?! We've had those in Canada for years. It's the wake-up strip.

The problem with this, of course, is that you have to be going 28 mph for this to work.

Unless you're putting it in residential areas, all it would do is piss me off because residential areas are the only time that I'm going around that speed. Period.

I wonder if there is a way to make it play other songs.

update: This was tried in the USA, but failed because people would begin swerving all over the road thinking they were driving off the road and hitting the "drunk bumps" ;-)

@TheBear91: We always called them "verrr verps"

yep, we've got the wake-up strip in Australia that hums quite loudly at 100km/h.

But the power of suggestion could be rather insiduous...
eg. playing McD's jingle as you approach one of their outlets (or maybe their competitor's outlets like Google Adwords)

"I wonder If u know, How they live in tokyo"

Somehow it doesn't have the same appeal as "He's got the whole world in his hands" ala Con Air.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Narcotics not required. But they're optional, though, right?

The Japanese are known not only for the breadth and scope of their culture of invention, but also for the strange way some of those inventions translate to the Western world. As an example, take a look at the Melody Road.

My recent thoughts on 'Indiscreet music' and modeling urban sounds just got a whole new variable to deal with. "The Melody Road will allow a car passing above it to play a simple tune, which is made audible by ridges on the road’s surface.