An Irishman's Diary

An exciting development in traffic calming is a contradiction in terms, I know. Even so, such a description seems justified in the case of the latest invention from Japan: the musical road.

The concept - which involves the interplay between car wheels and specially cut grooves in the road surface - is still in its infancy. So far, the music is available only on three short stretches of highway, one of which now plays a 30-second burst of a pop song. But the potential is clearly enormous.

With the global record industry desperate to find new ways to make money, I predict that Steve Jobs will have an Apple iRoad (tolled) on the US market within months, offering thousands of downloadable tunes.

Coincidentally or not, the optimum speed at which the Japanese roads work is 45kph, just like the RPM speed for an old vinyl pop single. Leisurely as that seems, unfortunately, it would hardly work on the likes of the M50, where drivers would not be able to drive fast enough to hear the tune. But no doubt the engineers are already working on an LP version, at 33kph. And even slower speeds may follow.

The musical road will be all the more exciting if it rids us of some current traffic-calming devices in urban areas, the speed-bump in particular. I support anything that makes residential roads safer, if that is what speed-bumps do. It's just that the wide variety of bump shapes and sizes, and their apparently random distribution, does not suggest there is much thought involved in the process.

The ones nearest where I live - on a road with no school and very few houses - are draconian. They appear to have been planned by the same people who, during the Northern troubles, designed the approach routes to British army checkpoints. The aim seems to be not just to slow your vehicle down, but also to detonate any explosive devices you might have in the boot.

The damage these things do to cars is a side issue. Luckily, I drive a battered old 1998 thing - German ambassadors please note - so my sensitivity on this score is minimal. It's the car I feel for.

I got a good deal on it some years ago because of the stigma associated with its Cavan registration - a stigma dating from when that county had Ireland's highest per capita pot-hole distribution. I sense the vehicle is still dealing with post-traumatic stress from its early years negotiating back roads in Killeshandra or wherever. And the process is not helped by having to cross speed-bumps the size of drumlins every day.

Bad as it is for the car, though, imagine the effect on a bicycle. I know about this too. I hit one of the bumps going downhill in the dark once and was nearly catapulted into the next postal district.

At the other end of the bump spectrum is the small, square variety, placed at intervals across a road, like semi-detached red-brick houses that have been trod on by a giant. These have gaps between them, allowing a driver to avoid the bumps, but only if he swerves towards the footpath, or out into the middle of the road. I wonder why road engineers don't stick up slalom poles and make it even more fun.

Anyway, perhaps the musical road will deliver us from all these. The mystery to me is that it was not invented here rather than Japan.

Apparently the discovery happened by accident when a JCB driver scraped a road surface with his scoop and, driving over it later, recognised notes resonating through his cab. But considering the extent to which Dublin has been scraped, bruised, dug up, and half filled in over the past 15 years, it's amazing some of us never heard a gravel-voiced Ronnie Drew in the tarmac, singing Take Her Up to Monto.

Still, there's no reason we can't exploit the technology now. The implications for tourism alone would be considerable. The town of Tuam, for example, could lure visitors with the Sawdoctors' N17 etched into the eponymous road. And maybe, as well as 45kph and 33kph versions, we could experiment with some scratchy old 78s on suitable stretches. Imagine how charmed a US tourist might be to hear a John McCormack-style version of The Old Bog Road under his rented car.

The potential will not be lost on advertisers, unfortunately. We may soon have sponsored sections of road, with this message to slow down brought to you in association with the local drive-thru burger joint. Along with their appallingly visible golden arches, McDonalds could lure customers via road jingles, alerting child passengers that their father lied when he claimed there were no restaurants anywhere around here.

Even this might be a price worth paying for an overall improvement in road safety, however. And with this in mind, maybe the authorities could mix up their tactics.

As well as providing tunes to reward those travelling at a moderate pace, they could have deterrents at higher speeds too. Certain stretches of road, passed over at 80 miles an hour, might produce a convincing impression of a police siren, for example. And perhaps anyone reckless enough to do 90mph could be punished by a short but intense burst of Celine Dion, performing the theme song from Titanic.