Coordination of Vehicle Lighting and Markings for Improved Worker Safety

Details

• Personal Author:
  Rea MS
• Description:
  Emergency responders, highway maintenance personnel, utility workers and others who work along the roadway are at increased risk for being injured or killed by vehicle traffic. The vehicles used by these workers are equipped with flashing emergency lights, special paint colors, and reflective markings to help drivers detect and identify them, and hopefully to approach these workers more safely in order to avoid collisions. This project investigated how the colors of flashing lights and of emergency and service vehicles and their markings impact drivers' ability to identify whether a roadside incident scene is an emergency or non-emergency situation. Through a series of laboratory studies, we determined that the colors of flashing lights were more important than the colors of vehicles and markings at distinguishing an emergency situation from a non-emergency situation. People reported that they would be more likely to stop or slow down when approaching flashing red lights, for example, which they associated with an emergency situation, compared to flashing yellow lights, which they associated with a non-emergency situation. When the colors of vehicles and their markings were coordinated with the colors of flashing lights, the peoples' responses were more consistent. This demonstrates that rapid and confident judgments of whether a scene is an emergency (or not) can be reinforced by coordinated vehicle colors. When emergency lights were brighter and flashed more rapidly than non-emergency lights, peoples' judgments became even more consistent, although this effect was smaller than the color of the flashing lights or vehicle and marking color. To learn whether our results from the laboratory studies would carry over to real-world conditions, we conducted a field study in which people drove along a course approaching vehicles varying in paint and marking colors, and in the colors, brightness and flash rate of the lights, during the daytime and the nighttime. Just as in the laboratory studies, drivers found the colors of the flashing lights (such as red versus yellow) were most important in judging whether a roadside scene was an emergency or not. Coordinating the vehicle/marking colors with the flashing light colors reinforced the consistency of the drivers' judgments, just as they did for the laboratory study participants. Increasing the brightness and speed of flashing lights made little difference in the field study, at least over the ranges employed in the field study. Overall, the project provided important results that can be used by emergency response agencies, departments of transportation, utilities, and other organizations to provide guidelines for the selection of vehicle and marking colors and the colors of flashing lights to inform drivers of the type of situation they are approaching. Providing this information to drivers will help them approach service vehicles and workers more safely, reducing risks to those workers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Environmental Exposure Environmental Pollution Mining Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Accident Prevention Emergency Lighting Emergency Responders Motor Vehicles Utility Workers Vehicle Safety Visual Perception Warning Signals
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  New York ; OSHA Region 2
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-12
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20069730
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, R21-OH-012465, 2024 Feb; :1-12
• Contact Point Address:
  Mark S. Rea, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L. Levy Pl, New York, NY 10029-6574
• Email:
  Mark.Rea@mountsinai.org
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2024
• Performing Organization:
  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20211101
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20231031
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:2b84b80176d404f19296c1515ad858614707bc40ec365b44b3dd478f887d53717ec8a1f041c227a7d0f7bcc207fc8f3556dbb862859f276bd974d4aa029f3d1c
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219258/cdc_219258_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.18 MB ]