The Musical Highway:
A California Road-Trip Must
Just north of Los Angeles, in Lancaster, California, you can drive on a road that will play music for you.
Have you ever traveled down the interstate or a side road, veer slightly over the white line, and hear the rhythm of the white rumble strips underneath your tires? Those rumble strips are designed to alert drivers that they are going off the road and to correct their direction of travel.
In 2009, the car company Honda set out to design and create rumble strips that could play a song when drive over: the first ‘Musical Road’ in the United States.
Honda chose the piece ‘Rossini: William Tell Overture’ to play as you drive over the strips. Signs along the road tell motorists to move over to the far-left lane and slow down to the speed limit in order to ‘play’ the music.
We consider this musical road a success, but a quick Google search will quickly show you all of the problems Honda encountered while designing and creating this project. The first location of ‘The Musical Road’ had to be changed due to local residents complaining of the noise.
More critics say that the music is slightly ‘off-key’ – but we think the fact that it even exists in the first place is pretty fun.
We never condone going over the speed limit, but it definitely sounds pretty cool at 100mph. (Video above). Route 66 has always recently installed another musical road, as seen in the video below on the left.
Enjoy, and remember to visit some Official Best of The Interstate Destinations on your next road trip!
