Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Anyone up for a road trip?


This "sounds" too crazy to be true (Pun intended).

The BBC (note spelling of "tires") reports:


A section of road in California has had grooves cut into it so car tyres play the William Tell overture, otherwise know as the theme from The Lone Ranger.

But the noise has been irritating residents in the town of Lancaster so much that it is now going to be resurfaced.

The quarter-mile stretch of road was part of a car advertising campaign.

The sound is made by specially cut grooves in the asphalt that emit different sounds as the tyres pass over them, similar to a stylus on a record player gliding across a vinyl LP.


Check out the video here.

I'm sure it's super annoying to residents, but I still think that it must be a "trip" to hear, (again, pun intended).

Research reveals that it is best to drive over it with a Honda Civic at 55mph. I might have to settle for an Accord.

From Wired:
From the Autopia "Most Annoying Promotion Ever" department comes a dispatch from Lancaster, California. Honda's guerilla marketers joined up with the Lancaster highway department and cut grooves into the pavement of a remote stretch of Avenue K. Far from ordinary rumble strips, this particular pavement modification caused a car's tires to resonate in a way that sounded like the William Tell Overture (yes, that's the theme to "The Lone Ranger"). Honda claimed the music sounded best when "played" on a new Civic driving exactly 55 miles per hour.

3 comments:

Christine H. said...

We just got in 30 minutes ago from our road trip, but we didn't drive through Lancaster. I couldn't even really pick up the tune from the video. But that's okay, I heard tunes like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Pharoah Pharoah" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and Ariel's song on our road trip. I'd take that over the Lone Ranger theme any day!

frisky said...

I LOVED it!!! I wish they would do that everywhere; what a great idea! Although the video was a little eerie.
That song is known in our house as the "Mom Song". Now that we got Riley's iPod going, I finally got the chance to use the line with that tune, "Your iPod's MY iPod, if you don't listen up." My baby's growing up... :(

Ryan said...

Apparently the road had been paved over before the story that it was going to happen was released. :-(

I suppose that was wise.