Long-term effectiveness of reverse linear perspective markings on crash mitigation in car-following: Evidence from...

Perceptual markings on roads are verified with short-term effectiveness for accident prevention. However, the long-term performance of them is seldomly investigated, which unintentionally impedes its more widely recognition and application as a low-cost and readily achievable countermeasure. Also, the previous perceptual markings were only tested for speed reduction effect, little is known concerning their influence on headway adjustment. Given this, in this study, we investigated the short-, medium-, and long-term performance of the reverse linear perspective markings (RLPMs) on driving behaviors and safety benefits in car-following. The RLPMs were a form of markings pattern that can produce reverse linear perspective visual information on the lane and lead to distance underestimation. The RLPMs were permanently installed on a straight and a curve segment of a freeway in China, and the naturalistic vehicle flow data one day, four months, one year, two years, and three years after the installation of the RLPMs were collected. The statistical analyses of general and sectional relative differences of speed, distance headway and time headway suggest that 1) the speed reduced and distance and time headways increased in short-, medium-, and long-term as compared with the baseline on both the straight and curve segments; 2) the long-term performance of RLPMs significantly weakened as compared with the short-term performance, yet sustained to 0.50 m/s in speed reduction, 3.77 m in distance headway increase, and 0.097 s in time headway increase on average within the observations in one year and above on the straight segment; similar sustained performance of 0.47 m/s in speed reduction, 2.60 m in distance headway increase, and 0.072 s in time headway increase were observed on the curve segment; 3) the RLPMs were tested to have positive and relatively endured effectiveness on mitigating crash risk in car-following measured by two surrogate safety indicators based on time-to-crash (TTC) and deceleration rate to avoid a crash (DRAC). The findings of this study suggest the RLPMs could be an especially applaudable form of perceptual markings as they are relatively effective in the long-term and are multifunctional in intervening speed, distance, headway, and crash risk. This study also emphasizes the challenge of more field tests and observations on the long-term performance of the perceptual markings, and the thorough considerations of the visual perception mechanism behind the markings to achieve an alternative solution to the long-term issue.