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Impacts of Coordinating the Colors of Flashing Warning Lights and Vehicle Markings on Driver Perception



Details

  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    Flashing lights on emergency and maintenance vehicles should be critical components to alerting, informing and managing drivers as they navigate around work zones, vehicle accidents and other roadway emergency incident scenes. These vehicles often also use distinctive colors and markings to identify the type of vehicle and potentially provide drivers with information about the nature of the incident they are approaching. In order to begin to understand how these elements (flashing lights and vehicle/marking colors) contribute to perception, a study was carried out in which participants viewed pairs of roadway scenes using scale model vehicles and lights adjusted to produce similar apparent intensities as full-scale lighting systems. In some cases the colors of the flashing lights were coordinated with those of the vehicle and its reflective markings, and in other cases the colors were not coordinated. Participants reported which scenes appeared to be fire emergencies, as opposed to a non-emergency situation such as a roadway work zone. In addition to differences between different amounts of coordination between the color of the lights and the vehicles and markings, there were individual differences among the participants. The results can guide future research and can help in developing guidelines for the use of flashing light and vehicle marking colors to reinforce driver perception and awareness. [Description provided by NIOSH]
  • Subjects:
  • Keywords:
  • ISSN:
    0148-7191
  • Document Type:
    Text
  • Funding:
    Grant
  • Genre:
    Proceedings
  • Place as Subject:
  • CIO:
    National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
  • Topic:
    Workplace Safety & Health
  • Location:
    North America
  • Pages in Document:
    1-4
  • NIOSHTIC Number:
    nn:20069731
  • Citation:
    SAE Technical Paper Series 2023-01-0839 2023. WCX(TM) World Congress Experience, April 18-20, 2023, Detroit, Michigan. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), 2023 Apr; :1-4
  • Contact Point Address:
    John D. Bullough, Light and Health Research Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 150 Broadway, Suite 560, Albany, NY 12204 USA
  • Email:
    John.Bullough@mountsinai.org
  • Federal Fiscal Year:
    2023
  • Performing Organization:
    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York
  • Peer Reviewed:
    False
  • Start Date:
    20211101
  • Source Full Name:
    SAE Technical Paper Series. WCX(TM) World Congress Experience, April 18-20, 2023, Detroit, Michigan
  • End Date:
    20231031
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:bb57d92972151db70e201bfdd62cb0fc4e507222aa483616a3fae2ab5298426e874b0c4a6a41b11237563ee3807bc0c0405271fa34bc6379b9349d4f49536162
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 685.42 KB ]
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