Top Roads Report Columns of 2025
Roads & Bridges columnist Dave Matthews finds the funny side of transportation. From vehicular psychiatrists to radioactive roadways, we’re revisiting three of his most memorable columns of 2025. Because let’s face it: transportation doesn’t have to be boring.
The Road to Brain Health – April 2025
With the help of AI, researchers found that older adults showing symptoms of depression display riskier driving behaviors. GPS trackers were rigged up to the cars of 395 people 65 and older to see if drivers suffering from depression were more prone to sudden braking, sharp turns or logging more miles. They were, so maybe skip that Uber ride with Grandpa.
The study didn’t end there, however. Researchers used machine learning to detect depression solely from driving behaviors, and the technology had an alarming success rate of 90%.
In a not too shocking discovery, researchers found that as cars do more of the driving, drivers turn their attention to … other things, like reading the news or personal grooming. In two separate studies using two different autopilot technologies, researchers found that not only did drivers multitask as vehicles could handle more of the driving, but they found ways to beat the system by pretending to pay attention so they would receive less alerts!
Driving a taxi may have its benefits! Just not on your physical well-being. Researchers found that taxi drivers’ low-tech lifestyle may give them a brain boost, and result in decreased rate of developing Alzheimer’s. Despite a shortened life span of 67 years (compared to the average population’s life expectancy of 74 years), it turns out cabbies might be dodging more than traffic — they’re dodging Alzheimer’s too — with only 1% having died from the disease, compared to the general population’s rate of 3.9%.
Unsolved Mysteries – March 2025
Is this town going bananas? A town in England has a mystery that remains unsolved. A plate of 15-20 peeled bananas reappears on a street corner on the second day of every month without any explanation. Sometimes drizzled in honey, the bananas show up without anyone ever seeing the culprit in action. Theories are of course, fruitful — a buffet for the local wildlife? Religious ritual? Or just someone with too much potassium on their hands? The mystery has also stirred up anger in many residents as the plate of bananas sit there and rot until a brave soul eventually hauls the honey-drizzled crime scene away. Despite efforts from a neighbor who left a sign politely requesting the culprit no longer leave the bananas, they continue to reappear.
A sax-playing samurai can be seen on the streets of Nagoya, Japan. This unexpected tourist attraction grew out of a local man’s love for jazz music, and a dream to jazz up the streets. When wearing ordinary clothes, no one seemed to pay his music any mind, but when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and required that he cover his face, an idea struck. Turns out, a samurai hat and a kimono was all he needed for his breakthrough to stardom. Now he can be seen on the streets playing his saxophone with a line of people waiting for photos and autographs of the infamous “Sax Samurai.”
The Road to Tomorrow – Jan. 2025
A Kansas City woman is literally paving the way to solving the city’s litter problem. As a landscaper, she would see heavy amounts of plastic waste on her job sites, and researched solutions to address the issue. She discovered that the waste could be used to pave the roads of her beloved city. The University of Missouri put her experiment to the test and paved three sections of roadway: using ground tires in one section, plastics in another section, and a mix of both in the third section. While the asphalt mix only uses 0.5 % of recycled materials, it accounts for a whopping 100,000 plastic bags that didn’t end up in a landfill. The university is testing the road’s performance with the help of AI, and if all goes well, she may go down in history as a revolutionary of road construction.
A radioactive substance that freaked everyone out in the ’80s is making a comeback—this time as road material. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency greenlit a pilot project where Mosaic Fertilizer is paving part of its property with phosphogypsum, a fertilizer byproduct that slowly decays into radon gas, because who doesn’t want their daily commute to glow a little? Why do this? The stuff has to go somewhere, and Mosaic’s disposal problem might just spark new road-building techniques. Critics aren’t thrilled, warning about risks to crews and waterways. Mosaic counters that most Floridians won’t be cruising down this radioactive road—it’s staying on their property. So, unless you’re invited to the company picnic, your tires won’t glow in the dark.
Europe is taking radioactive material a step further, as The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is transporting a container of antimatter across Europe by truck. Apparently FedEx wasn’t available. The rare substance can only be made with high-energy particle accelerators, such as those found at CERN’s labs near Geneva and cost a large amount of money to produce. If brought into contact with normal matter, the result can produce twice the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. To safely transport the hazardous materials, CERN constructed special transportable devices with superconducting magnets, cryogenic cooling systems and vacuum chambers that can trap antiprotons, which will be carried on seven-ton trucks. The transport will allow measurements of the antimatter to be 100 times more accurate, making this the most high-stakes road trip in history.