For U.S. motorists in any parts of the million-square-mile area under the heat dome of 2011 – with temperatures in the 90s and 100s (Fahrenheit), and heat indices 20 and 30 points higher in some places – there’s more to worry about than engine coolant and functioning air conditioners. Add exploding potholes to the list.

Actually, it’s pavement that is exploding, leaving potholes in its wake. This largely occurs with asphalt roads. Where concrete slabs are used in highway construction, the danger is buckling, as when one-ton chunks of concrete push upward due to the expansion effect of heat, creating dangerous steps and ramps in the roads.

One sign the pothole problem in Europe is increasing is when researchers come up with new and novel ways of managing them. In this case, it involves brightly colored asphalt.

In Europe, potholes are no less a problem than in the U.S. Roads built there before and after World War II are reaching the latter stages of their expected lifespan, and money is lacking to keep up on repairs.

When the City of New York repaved a section of Fifth Avenue twenty years ago along the front of the Plaza Hotel with something called glassphalt, the pavement sparkled from tiny flecks of recycled glass in the aggregate mix. But it was neither the recycled nature of the glass, nor the resilience with which the material can stand up to the traffic and temperature swings of the Big Apple, that caught the attention of the hotel owner, Donald Trump. The famous real estate magnate just liked how the street glistened.

And he wanted more of this glassphalt, according to a 1991 Knight-Ridder wire story in. True to form, Trump demanded that the other streets ringing the hotel get the same shimmering, glass-infused pavement.

This pothole was filmed in St. Louis, MO.