• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2012

The performance of road markings is classified into the visibility at daytime, night time, wet condition and rainy conditions. The objective of this study is to obtain the driving safety of drivers under conditions of unstable weather condition such as the rain. The visibility of road markings is closely related to the preview time and detection distances and the ways to improve road marking materials and increase the dry retroreflectivity and wet retroreflectivity, which are the measures of daytime and nighttime visibility is researched to decrease the traffic accidents. For this purpose, Road marking glass beads with the refraction rate of 1.5 and 2.2 are introduced to raise the retroreflectivity. After investigating the minimum threshold retroreflectivity and Install Minimum retroreflectivity at home and abroad, minimum control values for the roadmarking visibility and improvement of nightime rainy retroreflectivity are suggested by physical properties and retroreflectivity experiments.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2010

Porous pavements can provide road users with beneficial characteristics such as skid resistance and surface water drainage under rainy condition, and they cause less tire-road noise than conventional hot mix asphalt(HMA) pavements. However, voids of porous pavements are easily clogged by road debris at early stages, which leads to frequent maintenance works. Therefore, this study focused on the way of minimizing void clogging in porous pavements. During mixture design, the quantity of coarse aggregate has been increased to form many straight void conduits (SVCs) in porous HMAs. These SVCs were found to be effective resisting the void clogging problems. Four different porous HMAs(19mm, 13mm, 10mm, and 8mm) were developed and placed on highway roads. Their performances were validated with field tests during the past four years.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2012

Lane markings such as edgelines, centerlines, and lines that delineate lanes generally provide drivers with the various information for safe driving. Drivers can easily recognize the lane markings through the color differences between the markings and road surfaces during the daytime. However, it is a bit difficult for drivers to perceive them during the nighttime due to the lack of artificial lights. Although the glass beads with the 1.5-refractive index have been used to improve the visibility of the lane markings during the nighttime, it is still difficult for drivers to recognize the lane markings properly, especially during the rainy nighttime, which may often lead to traffic accidents. To improve the retroreflectivity and visibility of the lane markings during the rainy nighttime, the high refractive beads with the 2.4-refractive index are essentially required, but they do not work appropriately during the dry nighttime. Thus, the mixed materials with the 1.5, 1.9, and 2.4-refractive beads should be considered for the satisfactory implementation of the lane markings. This study reveals the best mixing rates of the beads by conducting benefit-cost analysis under various weather conditions in Korea. The analysis results show that the lane markings with the 100% of the 2.4-refractive beads provide the highest visibility of lane markings regardless of the roadway conditions, but the benefit-cost (B/C) ratio of the bead mixture is merely 0.46. The best mixing rate of the beads, from the highest B/C ratio viewpoint, was identified as the mixture with a 80% of 1.5-refractive beads and a 20% of 2.4-refractive beads. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.815-825
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• 2017

Visibility of lane marking is impaired at night or in the rain, which thereby threatens traffic safety. Recently, various studies and technologies have been developed to improve lane marking visibility, such as the extension of lane marking life expectancy (up to 1.5 times), improvement of lane marking equipment productivity, improvement of lane marking visibility by applying phosphorescent material mixed paint. Cost-benefit analysis was performed with considering various benefit items that can be expected. About 45% of traffic accidents would be prevented by improving lane marking visibility. Additionally, accident reduction benefit and traffic congestion reduction benefit were calculated as much as 246 billion KRW per year and 12 billion KRW per year, respectively, by reducing repaint cycle due to enhanced durability. 45 billion KRW per year is expected to reduced with improved lane detection performance of autonomous vehicle. Meanwhile, total increased cost when introducing phosphorescent material mixed paint to 91,195km of nationwide road is identified as 1922 billion KRW per year. However, economic feasibility could not be secured with 0.16 of cost-benefit ratio when applied to the road network as a whole. In case of "Accident Hot Spot" analyzing section window (400m), one or more fatality or two or more injured (one or more injured in case of less than 2 lanes per direction) per year were caused by pavement marking related accident, economic feasibility was secured. In detail, 3.91 of cost-benefit ratio is estimated with comparison of the installation cost for 5,697 of accident hot spot and accident reduction benefit. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.