01154504

Component

Traffic signs play important roles in traffic safety since they provide regulatory, warning, or guide information about upcoming roadway conditions to approaching road users. Traffic signs installed with good visibility and legibility can give road users enough time to react safely in time. Hence illuminate traffic signs during nighttime is critical for their overall performance. Various measures have been proposed for traffic sign illumination, yet each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Among these measures, LED technologies are found promising since they have advantages like lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, more luminous intensity, improved robustness, smaller size and faster switching. In this paper, state-of-the-art LED technologies recently developed in Taiwan, viz. SMD LED arrays approach and self-illuminating slim sign boards, are presented. Pilot studies using these newly developed technologies are introduced, meanwhile cost benefit of these projects are analyzed to evaluate adequacy of these technologies. It is observed from these pilot studies that the proposed SMD LED arrays approach and self-illuminating slim sign boards are cost effective, energy efficient, and can give much safer and greener roads. This means they are well eligible to be applied for improving visibility and legibility of traffic signs.

01147878

10-3397

English

14p

2010

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

DVD

Maps; Photos; References (8) ; Tables (1)

Highway safety; Illuminated traffic signs; International relations; Light emitting diodes; State of the art; State of the practice; Traffic control devices; Visibility

Taiwan

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-3397

TRIS, TRB

Jan 25 2010 11:42AM