Analysis of Visibility for Active Luminous Sign and Reflective Film Sign at Night on Freeway

Traffic signs on highways play a key role in providing road information and guiding drivers to drive safely. However, traditional reflective film signs have limited visibility at night, which can easily cause traffic accidents. In order to compare the visibility of traditional reflective film signs and LED active luminous signs, this study firstly collected the driver’s vehicle operating speed data and the driver’s visual recognition of the signs at the time point data through the real-vehicle experiments. Then, one-way ANOVA and independent samples Kruskal–Wallis test were used to investigate the differences and significance of the visual recognition distances between the two types of signs at night under different sign types, different speeds and different lane positions. The results show that LED active luminous signs have better and more stable visual recognition effects. When the vehicle speed is higher, the driver's visual recognition distance of LED active luminous signs is longer. Moreover, there is no significant difference in the visual recognition effect of LED active illuminated signs when they are located in different lane positions.