The Little Cats Eyes That Guide Us Home

Ever wondered why those little reflective bumps in the road are called “cat’s eyes”?

The story begins in Yorkshire, England, in the early 1930s - with a dangerous road, some shiny tram tracks and, according to the traditional story, one very helpful cat!

British road contractor Percy Shaw regularly travelled the steep road between Queensbury and Boothtown, near Halifax. At night and in fog, it could be extremely difficult to see where the road went.

Shaw noticed that the polished steel rails of the tram tracks reflected his headlights, helping guide him along the road.

Then, one foggy night, he reportedly saw a cat sitting on a fence. Its eyes reflected his headlights back through the darkness.

And the idea for the Catseye was born!

Shaw experimented with reflective glass set into a rubber mounting and metal base. He filed a patent in 1934 for his road-surface marking invention, and it was granted the following year. In 1935, he established Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd to manufacture the devices.

But Shaw's invention had another ingenious feature.

When a vehicle drove over the stud, the rubber mounting was pushed down into its housing. This helped protect the reflector from traffic - while the design also allowed rainwater to help clean the reflective surface.

So, in a way, every passing vehicle helped keep the “eyes” clean!

At first, sales were slow. But the Second World War changed everything.

Britain's blackout restrictions made roads extremely dark, and reflective road studs became particularly useful for helping motorists navigate without normal street lighting.

After the war, the technology spread beyond Britain, and Percy Shaw's Catseyes eventually became an international success.

SO WHEN DID THEY ARRIVE IN AUSTRALIA?

This is where the history gets a little harder to pin down.

We've yet to find a reliable Australian source that identifies the exact year the first British Catseyes were installed on Australian roads.

What we can say is that raised reflective pavement markers were well established in Australia by the 1970s.

A paper presented at the Ninth Australian Road Research Board Conference in Brisbane in 1978 described raised reflective pavement markers as an accepted road-delineation device used by most Australian highway authorities.

So, while we can't currently put an exact date on their first Australian appearance, by the late 1970s they were already an established part of Australia's road network.

Today, Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads officially calls them Raised Retroreflective Pavement Markers (RRPMs). Their technical definition describes a device that reflects incident light back towards its source - essentially sending your headlights back towards you.

And here's the amazing part...

The next time you drive over one, remember that this simple road-safety invention began with a Yorkshire road, polished tram rails and the reflected eyes of a cat.

A wonderfully simple idea that has been helping motorists find their way through the darkness for more than 90 years.

Images - Public Domain with the exception of the Yellow RRPM - Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0 - Wikipedia