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Title:

Effectiveness of Retroreflective Tape at Rear End of Heavy Trucks to Increase Visibility and Reduce Rear-End Collisions

Accession Number:

01625609

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to compare the visibility of various colors and patterns of retroreflective tapes and to evaluate the effect of human factors and environment factors on detection distance, perception-reaction time, and heart rate when driving following heavy trucks with different patterns of retroreflective tapes. Kitami Institute of Technology Driving Simulator (KITDS) was mainly applied for the experiment in this study. BACS advance is also equipment used in the measurement of heart rate to determine driver stress level. Five patterns of retroreflective tape design were evaluated and compared. The results of the study clearly show that the red and yellow combination of retroreflective tape placed horizontally and vertically on both right and left and upper and lower rear section of trucks following Regulation No.48 from UNECE is the most visible retroreflective tape pattern comparing to others. Gender, driver age, driving speed of following vehicle, tape width, tape patterns, lighting condition, and weather condition significantly affect the detection distance. Driver age significantly affects the perception-reaction time. When driving following truck with no retroreflective tape at rear-end, the perception-reaction time is significantly longer. Therefore, the selection of the most effective color and pattern of retroreflective tape is very important in order to increase the visibility of heavy trucks and reduce chance of rear-end truck collision, particularly at nighttime or in limited visibility condition.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND40 Standing Committee on Visibility.

Monograph Accession #:

01618707

Report/Paper Numbers:

17-03792

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Lan, Trinh Thi
Kanitpong, Kunnawee
Tomiyama, Kazuya
Kawamura, Akira
Nakatsuji, Takashi

Pagination:

19p

Publication Date:

2017

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Photos; References (15) ; Tables

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-03792

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 8 2016 11:27AM