After an extensive period of consultation and evaluation, the Federal Highway Administration recently announced pavement marking standards for all open roads in the United States.
The main changes include: On roads with a speed limit of 55 km/h or more, the minimum reflectivity of longitudinal road markings must be 50 mcd/m²/lux, and the average annual daily traffic volume is 6,000 vehicles. On roads with a speed limit of about 110 km/h or more, the minimum reflectivity of longitudinal road markings must be 100 mcd/m²/lux.
However, the Federal Highway Administration has determined that the standard does not apply to other types of road markings, such as center symbols, arrows, chevrons, or text. The minimum standards also do not apply to cross hatching, horizontal markings, or pedestrian crossings.
However, the US arm of Irish company RetroTek (Reflectometry Systems) welcomed the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) update to the Uniform Traffic Control Devices Manual. The company said the updates would play a key role in reducing fatalities and serious injuries from traffic crashes.
This regulation will also help support the operation of automated driver assistance systems (ADAS), the correct operation of which increasingly depends on high-quality longitudinal road markings.
Maintenance methods for road markings are detailed in FHWA-SA-14-017. These methods include visual inspection, reflectivity measurement, life expectancy replacement, and resurfacing.
The changes take effect Sept. 6, and AHWs and transportation departments have four years to comply with the new rules.
RetroTek said it “strongly encourages” U.S. road authorities to immediately begin a planning process to address how to monitor and maintain pavement markings to meet the new minimum retroreflectivity standards. “We believe the most effective solution for maximizing data collection and minimizing disruption to road users is the RetroTek-D mobile retroreflectometer system. It will allow road authorities to obtain accurate retroreflectivity measurements across the entire lane width in a single pass, day or night, minimizing survey time and fuel costs.”
”Our survey software can compare survey results from different years, helping authorities plan and forecast maintenance requirements and road marking budgets,” the company said.
RetroTek-D records real-time data and automatically saves it to your computer. Data includes driving route, retroreflectivity (RL), GPS coordinates, temperature, humidity, distance, speed, time and presence/absence of reflective road markings (RPM)/road humps. The system measures road markings at legal speeds, without the need for traffic control or road closures, and can evaluate up to six reflective road objects simultaneously.
Since January 2013, Reflective Measurement, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, has been researching and developing machine vision technologies to meet the needs of road infrastructure agencies and airport maintenance and safety stakeholders.
Post time: Apr-11-2025