Ice-warning Road Paint - Color coded safety...

When I learned to drive back in good ol' Ohio, one of the dangers that was drilled into the brains of new motorists was "black ice" - ice on the road that just can't be visibly seen. The only way to know when to worry about it was to keep tabs on the temperature - when you're in or below the low 30's, watch out! Well, it looks like there may soon be some help with that: French company Eurovia is developing a temperature-sensitive road paint which changes color when the temperature of the road approaches freezing. This is a pretty decent advancement in the usability of detecting black ice; previously, reading the temperature was a separate, often-ignored task that was separate from the task of driving. With this stuff, the temperature info is moved right to the road itself, where the driver is already looking for information such as obstacles, directions, etc. It's the right information provided in the right place to really be useful. So, maybe the next generation of new drivers won't need to be as scared of black ice - which will leave them more free to deal with drivers on cell phones...
[via NewScientist, Information Aesthetics, and The Product Usability Weblog]