Lines and signs: delivering safer roads for all drivers

This paper is presented in two parts. Firstly an overview of truly wet reflective pavement marking systems which use materials that are comprised of a combination of dry reflective glass beads and advanced microcrystalline ceramic reflective lenses to provide continuous dry reflectivity. The second part of this paper discusses the principles behind the design decisions made when developing a new retroreflective sign sheeting. Retroreflective sign sheetings are made using a range of reflective technologies including enclosed glass beads, encapsulated glass beads and more recently cube corner prismatic materials. Prismatic lens technology has afforded manufacturers the ability to construct reflective sheeting to meet specific driver needs, by modifying lens geometry to control the divergence of the retroreflected light. For the driver, correctly controlled divergence translates into higher sign luminances and thus improved sign legibility. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E217263.