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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