Glowing Road

The streets are one of the places that take the most lives of people each year. The mortality rate by car accidents is that 30% of traffic accidents result in deaths, affecting both the lives of people as well as the structure of public roads. As expected, these accidents triplicate during the night due to the dangerous mix between human fatigue from staying active overhours and darkness that complicates the understanding of the environment by straining human vision, these things result in a drastic reduction in reaction time to unforeseen situations.Within the scope of the road, the road markings are the ones in charge of maintaining order in the streets, and although its qualities make it able to function int her dark, such as the retroreflectivity property, it also has points against it, such as the dependency on lighting provided by the vehicles themselves, a limited range of functionality (Vehicle Headlight Range), and the presence of blind spots both along the sides of the vehicle and during cornering.Here it is aimed to improve the system of road markings by incorporating a fluorescent factor into the material, in this way, they would stop their dependence on an external factor, it would work globally and reduce the effort to visualize the environment, increasing the time of reaction.This property of fluorescence works by the jump of the material’s electrons between their orbits, due to the reception of UV ray. Which results in a re-emission of a lower frequency wave (in this case, of the visible spectrum). This property of emitting light allows an element to shine for more than 10 hours during the night, with a total life time of up to 10 years, thanks to this, the daylight that would be wasted is used, transferring its energy to use at night.With this in mind, fluorite would be one of the materials considered to be added to road markings to provide their quality, due to its large number of existing veins around the globe. Also, its affordable price made of the remains produced by making jewelry with this material. Resulting in a high feasibility of implementation for all countries, mainly in Argentina and South Africa, which are among the countries with the worst road conditions. In addition to this, since fluorite comes in a variety of colors, both due to its physical properties and the presence of impurities such as magnesium or yttrium, it allows a better interpretation for road markings that have a different coloration than the usual white.Along with this, it would also improve the quality of road markings, in response to wear resistance, due to its decent rating within the Mohs scale and resistance to ultraviolet rays.