Cat’s eyes have been helping to keep us on the tarmac since 1933, and have not been updated significantly since then. But a new invention aims to build on the cat’s eyes concept, making it possible to see reflected light on the road ahead, even if that stretch of road is out of a car's beam.
Percy Shaw's invention – inspired by seeing reflected light in a cat's eyes – was a simple but clever idea.
Paul Levitas, from London and Christopher Mouzouris from Bedfordshire have come up with something a little more complex. Their invention is based around cat’s-eyes-sized-units harnessing the light from a car's headlamps, then sends it down a fibre-optic cable to the next unit, which reflects it back out. This process is continued along the road so a greater stretch of road is marked out than is possible with regular cat’s eyes.
The proposed system also emits a red light on the other side of the unit so that oncoming cars know that a vehicle is approaching.
What stage the invention is not yet clear, but if it works, it will no doubt be of interest to the UK's highways agencies and to government.
However, the cost of installation may be an issue, since it would require thousands of miles of fibre-optic cabling – not to mention perhaps millions of light-emitting units. Questions over how the cables would be protected from wear and tear and vandalism might also arise.
But if such a system is proven to save lives on our roads, many would argue it should be considered.
Indeed, in the same way cat’s eyes have been adopted by many other nations, so too could the fibre-optic invention. But in the short term, on your next European trip you may find that only traditional cat’s eyes cover the road.
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