Accidents in which vehicles strike large trucks produce a disproportionately large number of fatalities. It is hypothesized that increasing a truck's visibility or conspicuity will reduce the number of vehicles colliding with trucks. The purpose of this project was tothoroughly analyze this specific accident problem, establish information requirements of vehicle drivers, review the state of the art of conspicuity techniques, design and conduct a series of conspicuityexperiments, design a new integrated lighting and marking system, design an augmented low-cost reflectorized system for retrofitting onlarge trucks, and field test the augmented system on fleets of trucks. Augmented systems were fitted on 2, 060 trailers, and accident rates were monitored and compared to those of a matched control group of 2, 060 nonreflectorized trailers. Both reflectorized and control groups accumulated over 106 million mi. Final accident rates indicated that the reflectorized trailers were involved in conspicuity-related accidents 15.1 Percent less frequently than control trailers. This paper appeared in transportation research record no. 1149, Visibility for highway guidance and hazard detection. For covering abstractsee IRRD no 817811.
Abstract