The objective of this study was to investigate the relative daytime and nighttime visibility of three crosswalk marking patterns: transverse lines, continental, and bar pairs. In general, this study collected information on the distance from the crosswalk at which the participant verbally indicated its presence. The 78 participants were about evenly divided between groups of male and female participants and between groups of younger (younger than 55 years old) and older (55 years old or older) participants. The study was conducted in November 2009 using instrumented vehicles on an open road route on the Texas A&M University campus. Data were collected during two periods: daytime (sunny and clear or partly cloudy) and nighttime (street lighting on). Existing markings (six intersection and two midblock locations) and new markings installed for this study (nine midblock locations) were tested. For the sites where markings were newly installed for this study, the detection distances to bar pairs and continental markings were similar, and they were statistically different from the detection distance to transverse markings both during the day and at night. For the existing midblock locations, a general observation was that the continental markings were detected at about twice the distance upstream as the transverse markings during daytime conditions. This increase in distance reflects 8 s of increased awareness of the presence of the crossing at 30-mi/h operating speeds. Participants also rated the appearance of markings on a scale of A to F. These results mirrored the findings from the detection distance evaluation. Overall, participants preferred the continental and bar pairs markings over the transverse markings. (Author/publisher)
Abstract