The state of our roads – what’s happening to Catseyes?

A sadly uniformed political sound-bite worthy only of a third grade politician at PMQs…
1. Is there a general problem with missing reflectors – some respondents stated that there isn’t.
2. Are any missing reflectors really due to ‘cuts’ or perhaps just the lack of reporting?
3. ‘Destroying people’s lives’? Is there evidence of fatal accidents caused by lack of reflectors?

Cats eyes do make driving at night on an unlit road much more comfortable. Whether the lack of them has led to accidents should not be the only criterion; making the driving task less stressful is a good enough reason as far as I can see, particularly in tricky bits of road.

However, would we rather have cats eyes replaced, or potholes repaired? Or more money put into social care to release hospital beds? Personally I rather see extra money raised locally that was ringfenced for specific important jobs. A local income tax or a sales tax would be my contenders. We have to pay for what we need.

Try driving abroad in pouring rain when the reflective line markings are washed out and are difficult to see!

The original cats’ eyes moved: every time a vehicle ran over it, it swabbed the eyes, and so wore out. Did Percy get another penny? Now the plastic ones are fixed, and I hope they will continue to work and keep clean.

I remember learning about the history of cat’s eyes when visiting a museum near Halifax in the 80s or 90s. There are various accounts online, and you can choose which to believe. Cat’s eyes make an interesting topic for education because they are easy to understand.

A benefit of cat’s eyes that is often ignored is that it is obvious if you veer off-course and start driving over them, later exploited using rumble strips.

Not to be confused with rumble pot holes which might not offer such good guidance.
Reflective road marking paint incorporating glass beads, and tape for more temporary installations, can be quite effective and maybe has displaced cats eyes in some areas. http://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/road-safety-uk/road-markings/

That’s a good reminder of the recent Conversation about potholes, Malcolm. It might interest those who missed it: https://conversation.which.co.uk/motoring/potholes-roads-cars-damage-tyres-council-lga/

Yes, a lot of road signs and edge markers had clusters of fruit gum-like glass buttons applied to the surface to catch the approaching headlights. They were also much used on direction arrows and town signs. By the time Motorways came along, new reflective materials had been developed for the signage but the old glass encrusted signs were still in place on many A and B roads for decades afterwards. I can’t believe there are many left now except in motor museums or as historic souvenirs. I remember once, during a gap in the traffic on the A11, digging the cat’s eye out of a road stud – it was quite a heavy and robust bit of kit and the glass ‘eye’ was embedded in a copper sleeve with two lugs like a bayonet fitting.

As the newly knighted Ken Dodd used to joke – he probably still does! – if the inventor of cat’s eyes had seen a cat walking the other way he would have invented the pencil sharpener.

I also wonder if fear [cost] of litigation may be a factor as well. With the proliferation of pot hols on some of our roads the possibility of an entire cats-eye becoming detached from the road way must exist. The housing itself is a fairly heavy steel casting that probably weighs a few kg. If an HGV/commercial vehicle rear wheel set [two tyres] picked one up it went through the windscreen of a following vehicle the potential for serious injury/death must be high. Councils with stretched budgets will be very wary of this aspect.

That is probably true, Burt, but they also do scouting at night for street lighting failures so they should be noticing some cat’s eye defects, although cat’s eyes are most needed on unlit rural roads, including Motorways, where scouting is less frequent. I would expect modern camera technology to be used for cat’s eye fault detection these days so that a print-out of a given length of road is produced after each pass enabling accurate replacement. On single-carriageway roads, the cat’s eyes have to work in both directions.

So far as I could tell, the only thing that could go wrong with the the original cat’s eyes was that the glass ‘eye’ in its sleeve could pop out under exceptional pressure of traffic or degradation of the road surface. Since there were two glass ‘eyes’ facing in each direction that still left the unit functional in most instances. Modern designs might be less resilient as traffic volumes and weights have increased beyond their design expectation.

The weak point of cat’s eyes is the rubber which wears. The lifetime will depend on how often a vehicle drives over them, which will depend a great deal on location.

This is an ideal application for capacitors and I am surprised that anyone even considered designs using batteries. I remain to be convinced that they will be cost effective but it would be interesting to find out.

The traditional [and presumably modern equivalent] cat’s eye types without an internal light source are ideal for roads where the traffic is using beam lighting whether main or dipped. I can’t see the need for solar-powered LED cat’s eyes in most highway situations.

I can imagine that the LED types are intended more for industrial sites and container depots where traffic might be moving at slow speeds on lower-level lighting and shadows impair the spread of overhead lighting. They are also probably specified for aerodromes where runways, taxiways and stands need to be permanently delineated in the absence of approaching headlights or overhead floodlighting.

Capacitor capacity seems the downside. We need catseyes to illuminate for the long winter nights, and in the murky weather that might follow, on days when solar charging is limited. It might be better to lay a low-voltage supply in a cable just below the surface and avoid the downsides of solar cells and storage.

By giving the LED-cats one eye, that would double the operating life, and flashing them on/off takes it to four times. It’s all a question of cost and reliability some of the options have not been around for long enough to know if they would be a good option. Maybe other countries are further advanced with tests. I’m a great believer in not being an early adopter when it is my money.

That would reduce their visibility distance and flashing might be bad for some people.

I’m sure that these factors would be checked before they hit the production line. Bigger capacitors are obviously another option. Larger supercapacitors can store enough power to start a car.

Visibility in poor conditions – mist and fog – will require sufficient intensity for them to be effective.

The design of cars is a major factor and some hatchbacks are poor in this respect. On my present car, the number plates stay reasonably clean but I do have clean the rear view mirrors and sometimes the headlights especially when the roads have been heavily salted.

Traditional cat’s eyes are kept clean by vehicles driving over them. Where there are roadworks and cones are placed in line with cat’s eyes, these soon become dull and ineffective.

My ignorant guess is that the closer the rear wheels are to the back of the car the worse is the dirt on the tailgate. Spray comes off the rear tyres and the back-draught effect of the car’s motion pulls the dirty spray back on to the bodywork. In damp but not wet conditions it sticks, assisted by the surface oils and muck from the road.

Perhaps they would create a safety hazard to the TT racers? Manx cats have no tails – coincidence?

Highway authorities have a lot of discretion to determine which road safety measures should be adopted for each length of road having regard to a number of factors. Once they have decided on a particular form then, for national consistency purposes, it has to comply with a design manual. Failure to provide any signage or driver guidance where there is a known hazard or a frequent safety problem could be considered negligent but I think it would be difficult to persuade a court that there was a breach of duty. The authorities will always fall back on the convention that a driver must proceed at a speed and with caution within the conditions and visibility prevailing at the time.

I believe the A12 is a trunk road managed by Highways England. It might be worth taking up concerns about deficient safety precautions with the relevant MP’s or with the Regulator, the Office of Rail and Roads.

A quick search produced this newspaper article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11845616/End-of-the-road-for-cats-eyes.html

From this article: “The lights have a battery which is capable of storing up to 200 hours worth of charge, which means they work even on days when there is little light.
They cost £30 and last for between eight and 10 years. By contrast cats eyes cost around £10 and last for between two and three years before they need replacing.” Is this backed up by independent tests? It smells a bit like marketing to me.

Perhaps we need to look for official information about the government’s plans. I have nothing against LED versions of cat’s eyes but would want to see some long-term testing to test durability and overall cost of installation and maintenance.

This does not answer the question posed by C Booth. Why are cat’s eyes being removed?

Clearview claim. for Solarlite LED road studs, up to 240h light output after a 3 hour charge on a sunny day – 100,000 lx. On an overcast day in winter, say 1000 lx max, a full charge would require around 300 hr. An 8 hr charge/day at this level would presumably give around 6h output – not enough to reach midnight. However the average winter level is likely to be much lower than 1000 lx. So the effective operation seems to depend upon quite regular sunny winter days. Does this logic seem reasonable?

Perhaps a Percy eye could be embedded between the LEDs, or they could be surrounded by a reflective panel, to compensate for poor weather?

I read ‘up to’ as ‘less than’. 🙂

The beauty of traditional cat’s eyes is the wiping mechanism. I hope that the LED versions work in the same way. If I was designing LED cat’s eyes I would incorporate a self-wiping mechanism, perhaps using fibre optics linking the LED with the glass ‘eye’. I agree that it would be useful to have a reflective panel.

One problem with solar devices is that dirt or abrasion will decrease the output of the solar panel. Having them on a dirty road surface and periodically being driven on is hardly ideal. Placing the solar panels on poles at the roadside and connecting wires adds to the complexity and a failure could put out a series of LED studs. Compared with other uses of LEDs on our roads, I am not convinced that this would provide good value for money.

I fail to be convinced that there is a superior system to the traditional cat’s eyes where no energy is required, they are self-illuminating from headlight beams, they clean themselves, and are made of heavy-duty materials for a long-life. In this application, solar power and LED’s seem to be solutions looking for a problem to my mind. Obviously traditional cat’s eyes need to be maintained properly. If the steel casing has become dislodged that can involve more work than just drilling a hole and plugging in a modern version [if that is how they are fitted]. I can’t believe that inserting replacement eyes into a traditional cat’s eye is much more complex than attending to a solar powered LED unit that has failed. I suspect that highway engineers have succumbed to marketing hype and wish to show off their modernity by embracing the latest technology even though it is not necessarily an advance in functionality.

As I wrote in a previous comment, there are many sensible applications for permanently-lit lane and space delineators but our rural roads are not one of them.

I am all in favour of those sorts of applications, Malcolm, and if the units are cheap enough I should like to see them used on the nearside of main roads to supplement the white lines. I also like the idea of replacing street lighting in appropriate situations; our local highway authority has recently spent a small fortune [PFI, I expect] replacing sodium lanterns with LED’s across the county, and installing shorter columns in many places, so they will not be keen to take them down again in a hurry. There are still hundreds of miles of unlit main roads in Norfolk that require a good guidance system and the traditional cat’s eye still seems right for the job. If people can’t see them perhaps they are going too fast!

From the Highway Code:
“Rule 226
You MUST use headlights when visibility is seriously reduced, generally when you cannot see for more than 100 metres (328 feet). You may also use front or rear fog lights but you MUST switch them off when visibility improves (see Rule 236).”

All new cars have to be fitted with at least one additional light at both front and rear for use in fog or other bad visibility conditions like heavy rain or spray or smoke, and these lights are of higher intensity than the normal lights. Far from also being “invaluable in fog or heavy rain”, that is in fact the only time when they should be used. Fog lights, whether at the front or rear, should never be used when visibility is clear enough to drive safely, especially at night when other drivers can easily be dazzled. Not only is this dangerous, it’s also illegal, and could result in a non-endorsable Fixed Penalty Notice which carries a £30 fine but no penalty points.

Reading the car handbook is useful but it’s also a good idea to know the Highway Code.

I do wish that all cars were fitted with two rear fog lights. Many cars have only one – on the offside – with a single reversing light in the corresponding position on the nearside. If space is short then the tail lights can be combined with the fog lights using either twin-filament bulbs or some LED arrangement, but this is rarely done.

I don’t think proper lighting on both sides of the car should be compromised in the interests of a styling fashion. Some light clusters look ridiculous nowadays. It must make maintenance and replacement more difficult and a lot more expensive than it needs to be. Reversing lights are not just for alerting other drivers or pedestrians but for providing visibility when reversing into a dark space so I think they need to be on both the nearside and the offside of the vehicle.

I have modified three of my cars to provide a second rear fog light. One required the addition of an extra piece of wire but the others just need a bulb fitted. My present car has one rear fog light and a reversing light at the other side, so I have been denied to opportunity to improve the safety. On the positive side, it does have duplicated tail lights.

I agree with all you say and have had several whinges about daft LED lighting. Used sensibly, it is worthwhile but there is no need to treat cars like Christmas trees. 🙁

Thank goodness that car designers have introduced some excellent safety features.

Drivers who keep their foot on the brake at traffic lights who have large bright clusters of lights on the rear almost blind you sometimes. Don’t know what the model was, but following a car recently with very bright clustered rear lights, it was almost impossible to see the brake lights.

As for reversing lights, I touch the brake pedal to light up the side of my drive when reversing as there is insufficient light from the reversing light.

I suspect that might happen more with autos, where most drivers pause at lights, etc. by simply keeping their foot on the brakes.

Another useful device on my automatic is “auto hold”, optionally selected, that holds the car from creeping or slipping back when temporarily stopped without me doing anything. No bright brake lights there.

The Highway Code informs drivers not to keep their foot on the brake when stationary and to use the handbrake. As Malcolm points out there are alternatives to the traditional handbrake.

So do I Anthony.