This Simple White Line Is America’s Greatest Unsung Innovation

The Wall Street Journal ^ | July 3, 2026 9:00 pm ET | Ben Cohe

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You know about the lightbulb and the iPhone. This is the unknown story of another ingenious creation that changed a nation.

Over the past 250 years, America has produced the world’s most valuable inventions. 

The lightbulb. The internet. The telephone and the iPhone. Since the founding of the United States, we have built airplanes, refrigerators and Costco. We dreamed up the microchip and we gave the world chocolate-chip cookies. 

But the greatest American innovation that you won’t ever find on a list of America’s innovations might just be one that you see every day. 

It’s an unsung idea that changed a nation and spread all over the world—and it was driven by one guy.

In the 1950s, around the time Jonas Salk cracked the polio vaccine, a metallurgist named John V. N. Dorr became the champion of a different lifesaver: a white line on the right side of the road.

For years, Dorr told anyone who would listen—and everyone who wouldn’t—about his simple way of making highways safer. A line on the side of the road, he argued, would give drivers somewhere to aim their eyes at night other than oncoming headlights. It was both cheap and incredibly effective, which made it a brilliant investment. Over time, his revolutionary stripe of paint would reach billions of people and guide drivers across the planet.

To this day, you depend on it without knowing anything about it.

“I’ve never found anybody that knew about it,” said Barbara McMillan, Dorr’s great granddaughter. 

It was also unknown to me until I wrote about another ingenious creation...

---

TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS:

[Roadrunner383]

Way back when there was Driver’s Ed in high school our teacher was a single guy, maybe 25. He would come into class hungover on Monday morning and say ‘What a weekend, I never would have made it home at night if it wasn’t for those white lines on the side of the road’. This was when the white lines were still new enough that people talked about them.

[LukeL]

I have wondered why no one has invented glow in the dark paint for roads. When the roads are wet the lines can disappear.

[Chainmail]

The real genius who came up with those small reflective squares mounted within those lines. On very dark nights, particularly when it’s raining, those things are life savers!

[Merrick]

Should I also mention (because it appeared in the article) that Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in Thomas Francis’ lab at the University of Michigan?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I have wondered why no one has invented glow in the dark paint for roads.

Back in the '60s and '70s they had reflective epoxy paint that reflected the light from your headlights. Better than glow in the dark. Then the EPA decided the fumes from drying epoxy paint were verboten, and that was the end of that.

[FamiliarFace]

They really are!

[TangoLimaSierra]

I had the same in ski goggles back in the 60s.
I'd wear them driving home at night.

[TheThirdRuffian]

I always called it the “fog line”.

I shall henceforth call it the Dorr line. And encourage all to follow suit.

[TheThirdRuffian]

Buy a Rolls Royce! Still have them.

[Libloather]

I always called it the “fog line”.

Heard it called that for the very first time on a YouTube cop video just this afternoon. Makes perfect sense.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"The white line on the right side was just becoming a thing."

Yes, me, too. I started learning to drive in 1967 and the right side lane marker was not yet ubiquitous. Popular Science used to run great articles about driving safety and many of those stuck with me. One of those articles taught me to look to the right side of the road at night to avoid looking at the oncoming headlights and giving you temporary night blindness after the car passed. I still instinctively do that.

These days in the San Fran Bay Area, the biggest money making business has got to be painting streets. Bike lane markings are everywhere. HUGE swaths of green paint all over the pavement. White lines everywhere. The pavement markings have become an incomprehensible crazy-quilt of stripes and lines. It's typical government -- never think about what you are doing and, if a little bit is good, a lot more has to be even better.

The very latest craze here is to put up vertical reflective posts on the right side of the road to separate the car lane from the bike lane. These things stand about 4 ft high and look like giant venetian blinds standing vertically on edge. Being reflective, they bounce your car headlights right back into your eyes. I've seen people totally confused by them and cars actually driving in the bike lane thinking it is another car lane. Or turning into the bike lane at a 4-way stop. The photo below shows the posts but it is a BIG lie. You almost NEVER see bicycles in those bike lanes.

[Persevero]

Yes I argue ad infinitum that wealth is created there is not just one pie in the whole world to divide.

Capitalism acknowledges this truth.

[FrozenAssets]

9 months out of the year in these parts the whole road is white!

[Bobbyvotes]

I wear sunglasses while driving at night. Much less blinding glare from oncoming cars.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Was recently on the interstate when a huge storm hit - raining so hard I could barely see. Just slowed down and kept it between the white line and the dotted line and I was fine. The lines on the road have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives.

[PhiloBedo]

Bots Dots!

[JohnnyP]

“I miss the old hood ornaments some times!”

Better than to be hit by one. :)

[cyclotic]

I once drove about 76 miles in soupy fog. Visibility was about 20 feet. I kept the headlights off as long as I could. Then I used electrical tape to make a cross cross on the headlights to only allow enough light through to see the magic white line.

I remember the line disappearing for a short bit and being quite scared of finding a tree.

A hearty huzzah to Mr. Dorr.

[cyclotic]

Some areas now pigment blacktop dark brown or dark green on the drive lanes and black on the shoulder.

It’s an extremely good idea to

[Texas resident]

White line fever: Merle Haggard.