THE ISSUE OF ROAD VISIBILITY AND ROAD TRAFFIC SAFETY

• Main Author: Paweł KĘPA
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rzeszow University of Technology 2020-12-01
• Series: Humanities and Social Sciences
• Subjects: road traffic safety; pedestrian; driver; traffic accident
• Online Access: https://hss.prz.edu.pl/hss/article/view/223

One of the most difficult problems faced by drivers at night is road visibility and difficulty in seeing obstacles in a timely manner. Many night-time accidents occur on roads with no artificial lighting, especially outside built-up areas. In 2014, in order to improve road safety, a provision for the obligatory use of reflective elements by pedestrians outside built-up areas at night was introduced. However, the exact parameters of these reflective elements (in particular the color, size and location) were not specified, which may have an impact on pedestrian safety. This article compares a car driver’s range of visibility when pedestrians are equipped with different colors of a reflective element, examining the influence of different colors on safety. The analysis shows that, despite the similar technical properties of the same reflective elements, their color contributed to the improvement of visibility, and thus road safety. An experiment conducted in real road conditions testing yellow and orange reflective elements proved that the yellow reflective element significantly improved the range of the driver’s perception.