They say you shouldn’t cry over spilled milk. In the case of Edward N. Hines, however, not only was spilled milk no reason to get upset, it was actually the trigger for a groundbreaking idea. Hines originally trained as a printer but he was also an avid cyclist and could often be found pedaling the roads. In 1890 he founded the Good Roads organization in Michigan, which advocated for the construction of new and safer country routes. There was an urgent need for them at the turn of the twentieth century, as the existing roads had been designed for horse-drawn carriages – i.e., not for the few cars that were around at the time and certainly not for bicycles. As a result, these roads were often dangerous to travel on and markings were not a common sight. But that was soon to change.

In 1906, Hines was appointed to the newly created Wayne County Board of Roads together with Henry Ford. Hines was made chairman, a position he held for 32 years. While in office, he witnessed the growing popularity of automobiles, yet traffic still wasn’t properly regulated in a lot of situations; many of the traffic control measures we take for granted today had yet to be conceived and implemented. It was in 1911 that Hines came up with an idea considered by many, even to this day, to be one of the most important of all road safety devices: lines in the middle of the road to separate traffic traveling in opposing directions. Legend has it that his inspiration came from a leaky milk wagon leaving a thin white trail of milk behind it on the gray road surface. Hines was so struck by the contrast that he had markings painted on bends and sections of bridges in his county and later on the entire highways. In so doing, he had changed the face of roads for all who have traveled on them since.