Safety Evaluation of Wet-Reflective Pavement Markers Markings*

FHWA-HRT-15-065

Safety Evaluation of Wet-Reflective Pavement Markings

5. Report Date

September 2015

Craig Lyon, Bhagwant Persaud, and Kimberly Eccles

8. Performing Organization Report No.

9. Performing Organization Name and Address

Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB)
8300 Boone Blvd., Ste. 700
Vienna, VA 22182-2626

Persaud Lyon, Inc.
87 Elmcrest Road
Toronto, Ontario M9C 3R7

10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS)

U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590

Safety Evaluation

The Federal Highway Administration Office of Safety Research and Development Contract Task Order Manager was Roya Amjadi. The project team members were Craig Lyon, Dr. Bhagwant Persaud, and Kimberly Eccles.

The Federal Highway Administration organized a pooled fund study of 38 States to evaluate low-cost safety strategies as part of its strategic highway safety effort. One of the strategies selected for evaluation was the application of wet-reflective pavement markings. This strategy involves upgrading existing markings from standard marking materials to wet-reflective markings applied as a paint, tape, or thermoplastic material. The purpose was to provide an improved level of retroreflectivity in wet-road conditions. Geometric, traffic, and crash data were obtained for treated freeway sections in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin; treated two-lane rural road locations in Minnesota; and treated multilane road sections in Wisconsin. To account for potential selection bias owing to regression-to-the-mean, an Empirical Bayes (EB) before–after analysis was conducted. The analysis also controlled for changes in traffic volumes over time and time trends in crash counts unrelated to the treatment. Intersection-related, snow/slush ice snow/slush/ice*, and animal crashes were excluded from the analysis. For freeways, the combined results for all States indicated reductions in crashes that are statistically significant at the 95-percent confidence level for injury and wet-road crashes, with estimated crash modification factors (CMFs) of 0.881 and 0.861, respectively. For multilane roads, statistically significant reductions were estimated for total crashes (CMF = 0.825), injury crashes (CMF = 0.595), run-off-road crashes (CMF = 0.538), wet-road crashes (CMF = 0.751), and nighttime crashes (CMF = 0.696). For two-lane roads, the sample of crashes was too small to detect an effect with statistical significance for any of the crash types, but there were indications that the treatment had a safety benefit for wet-road crashes. Benefit–cost ratios estimated with conservative cost and service life assumptions were 1.45 for freeways and 5.44 for multilane roads. The results suggest that the treatment—even with conservative assumptions on cost, service life, and value of a statistical life—can be cost effective, especially for multilane roads.

Wet-reflective pavement markings, Low-cost, Safety improvements, Safety evaluations, Empirical Bayesian

No restrictions. This document is available through the
National Technical Information Service
Springfield, VA 22161.
http://www.ntis.gov/about/contact.aspx

19. Security Classification
(of this report)

Unclassified

20. Security Classification
(of this page)

Unclassified

21. No. of Pages

49