Route 66 Musical Road

Tijeras, New Mexico

The Route 66 Musical Road was paid for by an insurance company for the 2014 National Geographic Channel series, "Crowd Control." It was a social experiment to see if people would obey an unpopular safety law if a reward was offered. The law: a 45 mph speed limit. The reward: a "singing road" that would play a short clip of "America the Beautiful" (and the sponsor's advertising jingle) if drivers obeyed the law.

The highway was heated with giant blowtorches, then a special rumble strip was pressed into the hot asphalt, just inside the white line marking the edge of the road. Audio engineers had designed the strip patterns to produce the individual notes of the songs when driven over at the proper speed. The roadwork only took a day, and opened to traffic on October 1, 2014.

"America the Beautiful" comes through clearly inside a closed vehicle, but does sound slightly different depending on the size of your tires. If you want to record it, don't hold your phone out the window; all you'll hear is wind noise (And you might drop your phone).

Despite the popularity of the Musical Road, it was never duplicated on the westbound lane, so travelers driving west on Route 66 have to turn around and drive east to enjoy it.

Though the official signs have been removed, the highway has held up surprisingly well. Maybe if everyone obeyed posted speeds, our roads would last longer.