Citation

Jacobs GF, Hedblom TP, Bradshaw TI, Hodson NA, Austin RL. Transp. Res. Rec. 1995; 1495: 68-76.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

With the availability of pavement marking systems having varying reflective performance, the brightness a road surface marking must have to provide safe and effective guidance has remained undefined. This work studied minimum reflective brightness needed for a pavement marking to be visible to a driver as a function of distance of the marking from a vehicle. Six pavement marking products having a wide range of retroreflective brightness performance were viewed as isolated center skip lines from stationary vehicles at distances from 30 to 250 m in a dark rural setting. Product detectability for each viewer/marking combination was determined. Also, seven pavement marking products were viewed from moving vehicles with a driver approach speed of 24 kph. Detection distances for each driver/marking combination were determined. Retroreflective brightness of the products as a function of distance was measured at geometries corresponding to the vehicle-driver distances of the experiment. Detectability of pavement markings depends on the viewing conditions. A correlation could be seen between detectability of pavement markings and product brightness and viewing distance. The nature of this correlation was different when the experiment was changed from a stationary viewing to one with a moving vehicle with shorter detectability distances for the same marking in a moving vehicle.

Language: en

Keywords

Automobile drivers; Traffic signs; Visibility; Pavements; Light reflection; Photometry