A road with a huge red line. Another with a green line that shines in the dark. Stripes to the sides, circles in the curves and even pedestrian crossings that have become murals. The fight to contain traffic accidents is living its own fever: the fever of painting roads and streets.
And it makes a lot of sense.
It’s really about deceiving our brain. When a driver or motorist perceives that it circulates through a narrower step, he lifts his foot from the accelerator instinctively. The same happens if you approach a crossing where the entire ground has been painted to get attention.
It is obvious that this narrowing does not exist. Everything is in our mind. It is proven that a vertical signal does not generate the same perception of risk as road paint. Simply because a signal is easy to ignore it but when the view detects that the ground has a lower “free” surface a signal is sent to the brain that perceives a greater risk and the driver decreases speed.
The samples are multiple and are being tested with them worldwide. Of course, Spain is also doing its own tests.
A generalized illusion
It doesn’t matter if we talk about Spain or any other place in the world. The human being behaves the same in Scotland, the United States, Malaysia or Andalusia. We have the test that in all these places solutions are sought to a recurring problem with an equally recurring mechanism: paint the soil.
Within the cities The most striking cases are found in countries where urban distribution is designed for the car (United States) or where a road crosses a town (France). Nor are the evidence in school environments or small populations where it is common to cross walking (Spain).
The first example is not only a test. As rescued in BloombergNew York City implemented Asphalt Art Initiativea project to draw large murals at conflicting crosses in the city. The results have been striking, before launching the project, 50% of the pedestrians who had suffered an outrage had suffered injuries. Painting the soil, the vehicles circulated more slowly and the percentage of pedestrians that referred injuries after an outrage had been reduced to 37%.
Dragon teeth on a Madrid school
Reducing the speed at which it circulates is especially important in these cases, the DGT notes that at 30 km/h, the possibility of dying in an outrage is 10% but that at 50 km/h, the risk increases to 80%. That is why the measures taken next to the educational centers where in recent years have grown the use of those known as “dragon teeth” who aspire to generate the feeling of narrowing in the streets are especially interesting.
In Spain we have other cases. El Campillo, a municipality located 70 kilometers from Huelva, is studying whether to paint zebra crossings that generate a 3D Perspective It can help reduce drivers. It is not a new idea, much less, it is something that has also been tested in Iceland and the United States. Of course, in the latter case they received criticism from the Federal Highway Administrationwho claimed that it was simply a false sensation of pedestrians but doubted their direct impact on specific cases.
Criticism focuses on that, really, there is nothing that really prevents the driver from continuing to circulate at a high speed. However, in France they have another idea. Tired that Beuné’s journey (a town located near Angers, west of the country) was taken as a real highway, the neighbors decided to paint the streets of the municipality. And the results were positive … at least as far as their perception is concerned because they recognized not having data from whether drivers had really reduced speed.
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More slowly
Getting drivers to raise their foot from the accelerator when passing through a town is one of the biggest problems with which a town can fight. Especially if, as in the case of this Italian town, it is the road that starts in two the municipality.
In that case, Acchetico, a town of just over 100 inhabitants, ended up installing a radar that sanctioned 58,000 drivers in 10 days. It was a desperate measure. In Spain, work has also been worked on the secondary roads, although otherwise.
In recent years, those painted on the ground that generate the feeling that the lane is narrowed before reaching a town have been popularized. It is exactly the same that is used in the streets of the school centers although in this case they are at the entrance of some municipalities such as Nava de Roa (Burgos).
It is only one of the examples that the DGT has launched in recent years. In northern Madrid you can find road marks such as those implemented in Catalonia where some circles located in the line that divides the two lanes helps motorists to draw the curves safely and remove some gas in their path. It is a pilot test that has also been implemented in other places such as Austria.
In the latter case they affirm that the simple road marks of the soil has an immediate effect on the perception of the motorist. With an investment of just 3,000 euros, it was estimated that the percentage of bikers who violated the norm and entered the opposite lane was 44%. Before painting the soil, 77% exceeded their lane. Specifically, the best data was reported from the Tyrol, where accidents had been reduced by 80%.
Although the clearest example of recent years in Spain has been implemented by the DGT with a red line on a secondary road in Andalusia. On the A-355 road, which connects the populations of Marbella and Cártama, traffic has painted a huge red line with the aim of reducing accidents in one of the most dangerous roads in Spain. When the road was created in 2014, a traffic of 7,000 cars was expected, today more than 20,000 vehicles are calculated daily.
It is a simple measure although its effectiveness is not clear. The latter only time will say. What they have proven first hand is that it is useless to paint lines that shine in the dark if the Price is excessive. It is something that they know well in Malaysia where that “cheap and effective” has not been applied.
There, the authorities used special paint that shone in the dark to facilitate that the driver had a clear image of where the road continued. The problem: the special painting was 20 times more expensive than the usual.
Photo | Alexander Nanta Linggi, Ministry of Development of the Junta de Andalucía and WorldOfSoftware
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