Via an obscure Wikipedia entry on Austria's S16 Autobahn, I got sucked into articles on how the autobahn operator, ASFINAG, uses dowsers to help improve road safety on crash-prone sections.
From a 2008 article in DerStandard (translated): "The longest-serving autobahn healer is 76-year-old Ilmar Tessmann from Carinthia. For more than ten years he has been fighting against the evil rays of the earth."
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3124638/die-pendelprofis-der-asfinag
"We use [dowsers] in places where accidents often happen without any obvious reason," an ASFINAG spokesperson told Austria's Datum magazine in 2007. "It's important for us that we don't have to blame ourselves afterwards for not having everything done to avoid accidents.” 🤔🤔🤔
@mgrass That Wikipedia article is fun, with its "earth rays" and "fields of force stones"!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlberg_Schnellstra%C3%9Fe
I've heard that in some unwaveringly straight routes in the USA, unnecessary bends in the road are introduced, just to keep drivers awake. Maybe adding some wiggles to avoid a "field of force stones" perceived by a charlatan or nutcase could have a beneficial effect, even if it's for a wrongheaded reason.
Michael Grass
XM424987 (Yrba Eboovaf) 𓃬𓅳
JohnMashey