Abstract:
A Safe System Approach is built on several complementary safety layers provided by the
car, the road infrastructure and improved driver behavior, through education or
enforcement. Historically road markings and traffic signs have focused on the driver impact
by human detection and making the infrastructure better visible in all weather and traffic
situations.
More recently the adaptation of the road to machine vision has become very relevant due
to the developments in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous
vehicles (AV). Better road markings are required to improve the confidence of ADAS, and
secondly to lay the base for higher levels of vehicle automation. The General Safety
Regulation in the EU already mandates ADAS in new vehicle models. In 2024 all new
registered vehicles need to be equipped with several ADAS, including Lane Keeping
Assist (LKA) or Lane Departure Warning (LDW) systems.
The human eyes and cameras are the sensors currently used have limitations in detecting
road markings under certain conditions e.g., glare from sunlight or oncoming vehicles, rain,
fog, low light nighttime conditions. All-weather performing (AW) tapes contain the latest
developed high optics road markings, made of a mix of higher refractive index (R.I. mix 1,9
and 2,4) beads to provide reflectivity both in dry and wet condition when compared to the
conventional (traditional) paint road markings with the optics of R.I 1,5 to 1,7 that perform
mainly under dry conditions. This paper covers how better or improved road markings can
influence both human and machine vision, with focus on camera and Light Detection and
Ranging (LiDAR) sensors.
It has been determined that high performance (RI>1,7) road markings help to increase the
level of detection by both camera and LiDAR sensors, as well as human eyes. Particularly
an All-Weather performing road marking tape was detected from significantly longer
distances in wet and rainy conditions compared to traditional markings.
