Improving road safety through a novel crosswalk: Comprehensive material study with photoluminescent resin

Abstract

It is well known that road safety is a major problem in cities, resulting in a large number of accidents with significant injuries and loss of life. Much of this problem occurs when vehicles interact with pedestrians. To try to minimize this problem to a large extent, a combined system using resins and a photoluminescent additive was proposed. To confirm the goodness of this material, a characterisation was carried out covering luminance, vibroacoustic and mechanical properties and a study of its photogrammetry under real conditions of use. A luminance of 68 mcd/m² at 20 min was confirmed, which would allow, by a wide margin, a pedestrian crossing to be observed in a vehicle more than 100 m away. The acoustic vibration test confirmed that the proposed system would provide a very efficient audible warning to pedestrians and would reduce the average vehicle speed by about 37 % overall, while in cases where vehicles have to stop for pedestrians, this reduction would be about 28 %. With the mechanical characterisation, it was possible to determine a vertical displacement of always less than 2 mm in vehicles with a wheel load of 12.5 kN, reaching a compressive and tensile strength of more than 56 MPa. The results obtained confirm a potential reduction in mortality of close to 110 %, and injuries by approximately 55 %, as a consequence of the reduction in vehicle speed. In addition, improved night-time visibility of pedestrian crossings would reduce deaths by 35 % and injuries by 26 %, while in the most favourable situations, these values would be 14 % and 10 % for deaths and injuries respectively. All this confirms the great advantage of the system for improving road safety in urban environments.