By Chuck Woodbury
I took the photo below in a Seattle-area parking lot. The first thing I thought when I saw the lime green car was, “I wonder if it glows in the dark?” I mean, it looks just the right color.
It got me thinking about why an auto maker doesn’t offer glow-in-the-dark cars as an option. RV makers could do it, too. Wouldn’t it be safer on the road if vehicles glowed? Even without their headlights turned on a vehicle would be visible.
We’re sort of light crazy these days anyway. RV parks these days are already lit up like parking lots as more and more RVs come equipped with lights all over the place, front to back. A lone front porch light is so 20th century!
You can buy strings of LED lights to circle your RV, too. Some people think if you string lights around your RV it will keep mice away. I’m not sure it works, but I have seen a lot of RVs with such lighting. I have not, however, observed a single mouse high-tailing it away from such lights.
Well, I did a little research, and guess what? Back in 2015 Nissan’s European operation experimented with a glow-in-the-dark Nissan Leaf. It’s the blue car pictured at the top of this story.
Nissan says an inventor named Hamish Scott created a product called Starpath, a coating that absorbs the sun’s rays during the day and then glows from eight to 10 hours after the sun goes down. Unlike smooth car paint, the Leaf’s finish was rough like a cat’s tongue. Nissan officials said at the time they believed the paint job would last 25 years.
But apparently nothing came of this Nissan car or any other glow-in-the-dark vehicle.
I hope nobody ever comes up with a glow-in-the-dark RV. If it should come to be, please don’t buy it. Your RV park neighbors may kill you!
