Road Users Fail to Appreciate the Special Optical Properties of Retroreflective Materials

To determine whether typical road users appreciate the special optical properties of retroreflective materials.

Retroreflective surfaces reflect light back towards the source of the illumination. All drivers benefit from retroreflective materials, as they are required on road signs, on large trailers, in lane delineation, and other traffic control devices. Retroreflective markings can also greatly enhance the conspicuity of pedestrians at night, but pedestrians typically underuse retroreflective markings. One possible reason is that pedestrians may not appreciate the special optical properties of retroreflective materials.

Two experiments tested whether observers could correctly predict that retroreflective materials appear remarkably bright when illuminated by a source that is aligned with the observers' eyes. Observers used a magnitude estimation procedure to predict how bright retroreflective and non-retroreflective stimuli would appear during a demonstration designed to highlight retroreflectivity. They then judged the brightness again during the demonstration.

In general, observers underestimated how bright retroreflective stimuli would be and overestimated how bright diffuse reflective and fluorescent stimuli would be. The underestimates for retroreflective stimuli were particularly striking when the observers had not closely examined the stimuli in advance.

The fact that road users do not appreciate retroreflectivity may help explain why pedestrians underuse retroreflective markings at night.

Educational interventions could prove useful in this domain.