Summary

The high incidence of accidents associated with work zones suggests that current warning lights and signals are in need of improvement. In a two-part, three-year project, we propose to develop and test improved emergency warning lights for work zone vehicles (year 1), and enhanced rear warning lights for shadow trucks (year 2 & 3), both intended to improve visibility and conspicuity, and reduce reaction times, for drivers approaching the work zone. This project aims to design, fabricate and test an emergency warning light that will uniquely identify Caltrans maintenance vehicles and which will thus convey to the public the special hazardous nature of the portion of the highway where they are seen. The improved EWL will employ ITS principles and should be able, if deployed, to lead to meaningful reductions in WZ collisions. Additionally, this project will refine the shadow truck light bar based on a previous study on light bar technology. This study will examine the visual properties (speed of human response) of our proposed improvement. A prototype will be delivered for possible field operational testing at project's end.