I can't say I've thought about this a lot before, but it was interesting when I read this article to find out how the councils know when to grit the roads. Apparently they have a network of sensors in the roads that I didn't even know existed, and these sensors are connected to a nearby weather station. Fascinating!

I'm going to look out for them!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7169361.stm

A few years ago I attended a 'process analysis' course as part of my job and the case-study was based upon these sensors. It's quite fascinating how complex the whole system is to ensure that right number of gritters are in the right place at the right time. It also goes to show just how much we take modern technology for granted.

They obviously have them situated in the wrong place here in the High Peak, because they always fail to grit the worst affected road out of Buxton in the bad weather, unlike Staffordshire, who always manage to grit the same road on their side of the county boundary.

I wonder if we've got them in the United States? I'll have to check into that.

Kingfisher

That explains an item in my local newspaper at the start of last month which said that the City by-pass was going to be closed over-night for a week so that a weather station could be installed. It didn't make any sense at the time!

That is very clever indeed!

Interesting stuff. Still hate passing a gritter in the opposite direction though!!!

A few weeks ago when I drove off one morning just down the road in a bus stop was a large mound of what looked like salt, so I'm assuming a gritter had an "accident" at some spoint during the night!

It is a very interesting system that I'm sure most people don't know exist. I wonder how many accidents it saves? I would imagine quite a few.