If you find yourself in New Mexico, traveling down a stretch of Route 66, you can drive over a quarter mile-long rumble strip and your car’s tires will play “America the Beautiful.” That’s assuming you’re driving at the speed limit, 45 miles per hour. Don’t believe me? Watch the clip above.
As Atlas Obscura explains, the “Musical Highway” or “Singing Highway” was “installed in 2014 as part of a partnership between the New Mexico Department of Transportation and the National Geographic Channel.” It’s all part of an elaborate attempt to get drivers to slow down and obey the speed limit. “Getting the rumble strips to serenade travelers required a fair bit of engineering. The individual strips had to be placed at the precise distance from one another to produce the notes they needed to sing their now-signature song.”
You’ll find this particular stretch of road between Albuquerque and Tijeras. Here’s the location on Google Maps. Other musical rumble strips have popped up in Denmark, Japan and South Korea.
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…and if you drive on the wrong side of the road, it sings, “Paul is dead, miss him.”
Surely the speed limit is 55 mph, as seen in the first part of the video?