Deputy Ryan Swartz of Huron County, Michigan responded to a call about a car hitting a deer Friday night. The small doe just stood there dazed, like a deer in the headlights… well, not like, because that’s exactly what she was. Swartz got out of his car to shoo the animal off the road before someone hit it again, but the doe still didn’t move. So the deputy did what he had to do. After about 25 minutes, the deer took off into the woods. Link -via Arbroath

When I visit northern Minnesota, I always encounter a road that in midsummer becomes classically “washboard.”  The county sends out a road grader to smooth it and give it a new crown, and a few weeks later it’s a washboard again.

Minnesotastan looked up the physics of why this happens. The explanation includes a video that led to the discussion of the word “widdershins” in the comments. Link

(Image credit: David C. Mays)

Amazing, indeed. The picture on the left is dated 3/11. The picture on the right is dated 3/15. Meanwhile, a stretch of highway near my home was repaved in only 18 months. If you can read this post in Japanese, maybe you could give us more details. Link -via reddit

From Twitpic, this photo by @lula_serginho, posted by @karen_quiroga shows how the massive earthquake in Japan causes a road to – for the lack of a better word, "unzip."

Isle of tune is a music sequencer that’s as visual as it is aural. You build a virtual roadway and line it with objects that make sounds as your cars drive past them. It could be fun to build, but I never got past watching the landscapes that others have built. They can be quite hypnotic! Link -Thanks Jim Hall!

Actually – the village of Giethoorn in the Netherlands looks very lovely without any road whatsoever:

Can you imagine a village with no roads? There is such an unique place in the Netherlands called Giethoorn (pronounced ‘geethorn’). There are no roads, and cars have to remain outside the village.

The only access to the stunningly lovely houses in Giethoorn is by water, or on foot over tiny individual wooden bridges.

The Presurfer has the video clip on how one gets around the village: Link

Can you imagine driving 500 miles on one road? Not a highway, not a freeway, a road. In central Brazil, there is such a road.

There is a road in central Brazil that is 497 miles long. Big deal you say? We are talking about a street, one street, that stretches the equivilent of New York City to Cleveland, and then some, or from Los Angles to Flagstaff, AZ. That’s a huge freaking road.

Link – via clickable

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ninigoat.

The supercharged surface is embedded with piezoelectric crystals, which transform kinetic energy from passing vehicles into an electrical current. With widespread adoption, the technology could feed energy back into the nation’s burgeoning electric vehicle grid, transforming congested roadways into a clean green source of energy.

The amount of electricity produced isn’t that much (400 kilowatts per kilometer or 645/mi), and there’s no mention on how cost effective it would be. But given the sheer amount of roadways we have (the US has over 4 million miles of roads and streets in its highway system alone), it’s an interesting albeit niche approach to generate electricity.

Link