While there's already GPS systems out there that'll give drivers some prefiguration of road conditions, French company Eurovia is aiming to provide some warnings that are decidedly more real-time, with it now testing a process that'll absolutely change the color of roads as the temperature dips into freezing territory. That's, of course, not an entirely new process (we've already seen spoons that change color based on temperature), but Eurovia is apparently fine tuning things to hold up to the wear and tear it'll see on roads, and working to ensure that it turns color early enough so the salt trucks can be deployed before the roads get too dicey. While there's no word as to when we might see a wide-scale deployment, the company did test it with five patches over a 50 kilometer stretch of road in France this winter, and it sees no shortage of benefits to the telecommunications in the future, adding that it could also be used to warn pedestrians to watch their steps on sidewalks.

[Via Autoblog]