Video: Hungarian Highway Plays Music when Drivers Observe Speed Limit

There is a musical highway in Hungary, that plays a tune when cars following the speed limit pass over a patch of specially designed road markings. The road marking are able to eminates distinct audible notes due to the rhythmic vibration and rumbling between a vehicle’s tyres and the raised markings.
A video from the highway in Hungary has gone viral on social media and shows a car passing by the musical patch while triggering a tune. The musical highway was reportedly inaugurated in 2019, on route 67, connecting the city of Kaposvár and the M7 motorway.
The musical road was installed as a memoriam to the lead singer of a Hungarian band called Republic and the tune that we can hear in the video, belongs to one of their songs called ’67-es út’ or Route 67.
While the initiative is definitely unique and makes an ordinary thing like highway driving more fun, the pace of the vehicle determines how the notes embedded onto the road sound when driven upon. It would sound very different if a car were to drive at a lower speed or a higher speed than the legal limit. Hence, the original song can only be determined when a car crosses the mucosal patch at the prescribed 80 kmph speed limit.

Such musical roads are slowly but surely growing in numbers across the world. Alongside Hungary, other countries like Japan, South Korea, the United States, China and Iran also have similar musical roads to make long commuted more fun.
How engineers the exact musical notes is also very interesting as each note is produced by varying the spacing of the embedded strips. To achieve an E note, which requires a frequency of approximately 330 vibrations a second, engineers need to embed 2.4-inch thick strips that are 61 mm apart. A vehicle travelling at 72 kmph will emanate the desired note when passing over the strip.