White Lines
I need to be enlightened on something I've wondered about ever since moving to Minnesota. It once again occurred to me today on my drive into work.
It is a day when light snow is falling, wet snow. It is dark outside not only because it is early in the morning but because of cloud coverage.
Trying to find lanes in this type weather is near impossible at times. There are white lines, I know there are, for I see them in the summer or daylight.
For the first few years I lived here, I wondered why "they" didn't put the "bumps" on the white lines, like in California. I like the bumps. Serves two purposes. One, you hear immediately when you are on the line (a no no unless changing lanes), and secondly, if you are tired, hitting those bumps will wake you up!
Someone finally explained that with the Minnesota seasons, and the snow plows, the bumps would be gone by the plows. Ok, that made sense. This must be obvious to all who live in States with seasons. Not having lived in a State with "seasons" such as Minnesota, I did not think of this.
I'm still perplexed about another thing regarding the white lines. In California, whatever paint is used to create the white lines is, for lack of the proper word, almost florescent. No matter the weather, i.e. rain, or darkness, when the car lights are on, the lines glow.
So why can't Minnesota have these type of lines? The plows would not be affected and drivers could see the lines in almost all weather? (I'm not counting the heavy snow falls when we don't even see the road we are on).
Explain please.
posted by Lady of the lake @ 5:42 AM
2 Comments:
Best guess department....
This is a new one to me, the price of paint, and I can tell ya, it's a vast difference of prices. The paint on the roads in California are very nice, and there are two reasons for that. It is salt resisitant on the coastals. It is made to "light up" the road for night driving.
In Minnesotta, the weather itself creates the drag on the price....it would cost a fortune in taxes (I'm assumming you aren't actually advocating higher taxes, eh?) to put down a shiny paint that could resist freeze, thaw, refreeze, rethaw, and finally, one more freeze, though the last isn't usually as hard....
The reason this is a guess is because of what I discovered about paint prices for cars. Always thought they were just slightly expensive, like maybe seventy to ninety dollars a gallon.....
Turns out that the new, flashy paints are more to the tune of 1200 dollars A QUART! WHAT!?!?
So, despite actually living in Minn. for a year and a half, I had never paid it any attention about the paint (or the prices) but it seems reasonable to make the connection....
(And, since it costs so much for car paint, I decided to work on finding a way to put a "flashy" coat of paint on a car without the stupid [..other bad words here..] expensive paint.)
For all the money paid out in "road construction" here in MN, getting the "glowing" paint would not put a dent in the budget, IMO.
Yes, Love California roads. But they are slippery after a rain, with all the oil on the roads from lack of above. :)
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