Road Safety Performance Associated with Improved Traffic Signal Design and Increased Signal Conspicuity

1.0 Introduction

In British Columbia, 46 percent of all accidents occur at intersections that are controlled by traffic signals (ICBC, 1998). In an effort to reduce the number of intersection accidents, the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation (MoT) and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) have collaborated on numerous road safety initiatives. One of these initiatives has been to improve the visibility of traffic signal displays through improved traffic signal design and increased signal conspicuity. Phase 1 of this project was to test improvements to traffic signal design (i.e., larger signal lens). Sayed (Sayed, et. al, 1998(1)) found that the improved signal design was effective in reducing the frequency of collisions at treated intersections. This paper describes Phase 2 of this project, which deals with visibility improvements to the signal backboard.

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