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Road studs (also commonly known as cat’s eyes) are used around the world to delineate, along with painted lines, road space through retro-reflective spheres, which are illuminated by vehicle headlights. In recent years, the use of LED lights within road studs has been developed which has the significant advantage that the road studs are more visible due to active lighting than is achievable through reflection alone, can use dynamic colours and can be seen at angles that would not be reflected by headlights. These properties make LED road studs useful for locations where there is an increased risk of accidents such as unlit country roads, but their use has been predicted to increase generally on unlit roads, both major and minor, as an alternative to traditional street lighting. Typically, the LED lights are a single colour, such as white for lane delineation or red for the hard shoulder for example, although the potential to have active lighting, such as blue in cold weather or red if a vehicle is travelling too close to another have been explored. There will be a trade-off between the potential additional information that could be achieved using additional colours, and the potential to confuse or distract drivers.
This INROADS project aims to develop new intelligent lighting applications, tools and methods, integrating LED lighting across the highway that will enable the more effective operation, planning, design, repair and maintenance of the highway network. It will improve safety and service level, reduce vulnerability of transport networks to incidents, assure high-quality process without data loss and errors and reduce CO2 emissions by maximising the use of the existing asset and reducing the need for additional road construction. The integration of communication technology, and for certain applications, sensors within the individual units will enable enhanced traffic management and driver information and this is what will represent the significant step forward over existing systems, as the lights will be able to communicate with each other and with a central control. The potential for units to be powered by renewable energy, specifically solar or piezoelectric, to reduce carbon emissions and to be truly self contained will be explored; this would allow for their use on sections of highway with no readily available power source. For certain applications, a wired power source would be required in order to have 24 hour illumination, or back up power. |
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