If You Drive Down a Stretch of Route 66, the Road Will Play "America the Beautiful"
in Random, Travel | October 12th, 2017 2 Comments
If you find yourself in New Mexico, traveling down a stretch of Route 66, you can drive over a quarter mile-long rumble strip and your car's tires will play "America the Beautiful." That's assuming you're driving at the speed limit, 45 miles per hour. Don't believe me? Watch the clip above.
As Atlas Obscura explains, the "Musical Highway" or "Singing Highway" was "installed in 2014 as part of a partnership between the New Mexico Department of Transportation and the National Geographic Channel." It's all part of an elaborate attempt to get drivers to slow down and obey the speed limit. "Getting the rumble strips to serenade travelers required a fair bit of engineering. The individual strips had to be placed at the precise distance from one another to produce the notes they needed to sing their now-signature song."
You'll find this particular stretch of road between Albuquerque and Tijeras. Here's the location on Google Maps. Other musical rumble strips have popped up in Denmark, Japan and South Korea.
The Negro Travelers' Green Book, the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936-66)
Jack Kerouac's On The Road Turned Into Google Driving Directions & Published as a Free eBook
Ancient Rome's System of Roads Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps
Jan I Wolitzky says:
…and if you drive on the wrong side of the road, it sings, "Paul is dead, miss him."
Alan Northcott says:
Surely the speed limit is 55 mph, as seen in the first part of the video?