On a stretch of old Route 66 east of Albuquerque is a set of rumble strips that play “America the Beautiful” when you drive over them.
We’ll let KOAT-TV in Albuquerque explain:
The Associated Press reported that Tigress Productions created the road in Tijeras, New Mexico, for a new National Geographic Channel series, “Crowd Control,” that debuts next month. National Geographic paid for everything; no tax money was involved.
If you want to avoid the rumble strips entirely, they’re near the fog line and are easily avoided. But if you want to play that tune, you have to drive a steady 45 mph over the strips to create the effect.
A few other singing highways exist, as this YouTube search will show.
Here’s hoping someone will use the same idea and have the rumble strips play “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” instead. It seems a stretch of Mother Road near Seligman, Arizona, would be ideal. Of course, working out the royalties might be a bit tricky. “America the Beautiful” has long passed into the public domain.
(An image of Route 66 road surface by cm_hartman via Flickr)