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

By Joanne Wood - Download Here

This study establishes that retroreflective material increases the visibility of pedestrians to car headlights at night. She also found that cyclists underestimate how hard it is to see them and suggest that as much retroreflective material as possible, including on clothing, be used to increase visibility to cars at night. Here are a few excerpts.

“Night-time roads are dangerous for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. Even though driving exposure is much lower at night, fatality rates are up to 3 times greater than in the daytime adjusted for distances travelled, with a recent report based on US crash data indicating that the rate of night-time crashes is increasing. This increased crash risk at night is exacerbated for collisions between pedestrians and vehicles. Pedestrians are 3–7 times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision with a vehicle at night than in the day, with 90% of the increase in night-time pedestrian fatalities recorded in the US between 2009 and 2018 occurring in darkness.”

“The lighting provided by a driver’s headlights has many benefits for forward lighting of the road as well as the road verge and has benefits in terms of detecting the presence of roadside pedestrians.”

“These findings suggest that both cyclists and pedestrians misunderstand the extent of the night-time conspicuity problem and the potential value of conspicuity treatments.”