Manufacturing and Characterization of Intelligent Pedestrian Crossings to Improve Road Safety

Abstract

Road signalling systems help to improve attention and reduce speed while driving. However, most solutions are not commercially available, require expensive infrastructure, lack intelligence, or do not cover 100% of road users. To reduce this gap, this work presents a speed bump with intelligent light signalling that detects both pedestrians and vehicles on zebra crossings. The system is made up of low-cost prefabricated nodes with maturity level TRL8 that can be adapted to any type of road. As main novelty, this paper describes the materials and methods used to manufacture speed bumps with mixtures of resins, aggregates and reinforcing fibers injected cold on aluminium mould. As a result of the tests, a compromise between hardness, resistance and elasticity with IP68 rating was reached. This makes it possible to ensure the mechanical and optical operation of the system without the need for external power supplies and with an acceptable manufacturing cost. Key Words: speed reducer, road safety, pedestrian crossing, intelligent system, mechanical characterization

Enhanced Road Safety with Photoluminescent Pedestrian Crossings in Urban Contexts

“…In correlation, the research hypothesis of this work is to demonstrate whether improving the perception of pedestrian crossings could help enhance driver behavior to reduce speed and consequently the rate of accidents (i.e., it is so important to see as to be seen). The current manuscript aims to advance beyond prior works [23], introducing a novel crosswalk approach based on innovative signaling. Accordingly, the contributions of this work are the following:…”