Determining the correlation between daytime and night-time road markings visibility

Abstract

Road markings quality control implies conducting several different tests, of which the most significant are visibility tests comprising daytime and night-time visibility measurements by applying the static or the dynamic measuring method. Although the dynamic test method allows measuring the visibility along the entire road section and thus provides a more complete and objective evaluation of road markings quality compared to the static method, it does not measure daytime visibility, for which both the European and the national directives define the minimum requirements. The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlation between daytime and night-time visibility based on static measurements conducted on state roads in the Republic of Croatia. The correlation analysis determined that the strength of relationship between daytime and night-time visibility, is relatively weak. Despite being relatively weak, the relationship still exists, which was the reason for conducting a further analysis. In the analysis, a unique coefficient was obtained through the ratio of retroreflection value and daytime visibility value for all the measurements. The unique coefficient was basis for development of a model that will be able to calculate the daytime visibility based on the results of the dynamic measurements of road markings night-time visibility. The authors evaluated the model with a t-test and concluded that the accuracy of the model is statistically satisfactory.