There is a stretch of highway in California that plays music if you drive over it, but it sounds badly out of tune

On today’s edition of ‘Unusually Interesting Locations’ – we bring you this stretch of highway in California known as the ‘Musical Road’ because – you’ve guessed it – music plays as you drive over it.

That’s right, the music comes straight from the road — well, not exactly.

As fascinating as it may sound — pun completely intended — it’s terribly out of tune and isn’t remotely close to the song it should play.

The reason behind it was probably the lack of communication and bad math in general.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie

California highway ‘tries’ to play music as you drive over it

Back in 2009, Honda — yes, the automaker — decided it was a good idea to build a musical road on a random California highway because ‘why not?’

The idea was to build grooves on the road, so when you drive over them at exactly 55mph, they play the ‘William Tell Overture’ by Gioachino Rossini.

However, the plan failed miserably — twice.

A 2017 video from the Tom Scott YouTube channel explained what went wrong with Honda’s Musical Road plan.

When the construction of the Musical Road ended, Honda released a public video showing ‘William Tell Overture’ playing as a Civic drove over the stretch.

Civics were excellent cars and were popular for having capable engines, but this was likely one of its shortcomings.

Anyway, Honda’s clip was likely edited because it sounds terrible in real life, as heard in Tom Scott’s footage.

What went wrong?

This California highway could have been iconic, like Canusa Street, which lies on the US-Canada border.

The problem with its idea was the blueprint of the grooves’ design itself.

The grooves on the road were supposed to be a fixed length apart, say four inches, which they were.

However, the specifications failed to mention the width of the grooves themselves.

Basically, the four-inch distance had to be from the center of one groove to the center of the next.

Meanwhile, the grooves had a four-inch gap between the edges, making the notes ‘off-tune.’

What should have sounded like ‘William Tell Overture’ actually sounded like an amateur fan-made version of the ‘Imperial March’ from Star Wars.

Although this was a failure, it wasn’t the end of it.

Honda’s first Musical Road had to be scrapped because of noise complaints, so they moved it farther away.

The second try also failed because it again used the same faulty blueprints.

To this day, the Musical Road in California plays an offbeat variant of the track.

In contrast, we now have SpaceX astronauts playing violin in space.