Improving the conspicuity and safety of pedestrians and cyclists on night-time roads

The visual limitations of drivers at night are a key contributing factor to the relatively high crash involvement of vulnerable road users including pedestrians, roadworkers and cyclists on night-time roads. Making vulnerable road users more conspicuous (recognisable, rather than simply visible) to oncoming drivers, is one approach to increasing their safety and has been a particular focus of my research. This review highlights the experimental approaches that our multidisciplinary research team have adopted to explore these issues, involving both closed and open road studies at night. One effective strategy to increase night-time conspicuity of vulnerable road users is clothing that includes retro-reflective materials on the moveable joints which, when illuminated in the headlight beam of oncoming vehicles, creates a strong sense of 'biological motion' or 'biomotion'. Our studies demonstrated that this basic visual perception allows drivers to accurately perceive the presence of a person, such as a pedestrian or cyclist, at much longer distances than when retro-reflective materials are positioned on the torso, as in high visibility vests. Subsequent studies demonstrated that the benefits of biomotion clothing are evident in cluttered environments, in the presence of glare, and for drivers of different ages and visual characteristics. Evidence gathered in these studies was instrumental in changing Australian and New Zealand standards governing high visibility clothing for roadworkers to include retro-reflective strips in the biomotion configuration. Ongoing studies are exploring how to make biomotion clothing attractive to vulnerable road users exercising at night, and how to ensure that the limitations of night-time vision and the importance of increasing night-time conspicuity are better understood. This body of research has involved collaborators from a range of disciplines who have been essential to understanding and addressing the visual challenges of night-time roads and assisted in translating this research into tangible benefits for night-time road safety.