Stop, look and listen is a lesson that every child gets when learning to cross the road. But statistics released by the UK Department for Transport show that about 16% of all road accidents injure pedestrians – a figure that amounted to 29,000 in 2007. Out of these, a quarter were killed or seriously injured, casualties termed by the government as KSI.

In 2000 the government published Tomorrow’s Roads Safer for Everyone, a safety strategy aiming to reduce the number of KSI casualties by 40% by 2010. Although the directive is on target, with evidence that 86% of accidents still happen in urban areas, city councils have been making efforts to explore new ways of improving road safety standards and meeting these national targets.

Low-cost accidents

“This unique system has been developed to provide a low-cost engineering solution to help reduce accidents at zebra crossings.”

A technology many of these councils are turning to is an advanced marking system derived from technology that is winning several safety awards, including the European Innovation Award. Prismo Road Markings sales director Larry Walsh says Zebrabright is a specifically-designed solution to increase safety at pedestrian crossings.

“This unique system has been developed to provide a low-cost engineering solution to help reduce accidents at zebra crossings,” he says.

As part of Ennis Paint, one of the world’s largest producers of road marking materials, the company is working with the UK’s Nottingham County Council on test sites to trial the new technology.

Marketing manager Ian Galbraith says the system uses its proprietary Colourbright product that uses the most advanced lighting techniques. “Colourbright can be applied on the approaches to hazards, bends, brows of hills and accident blackspots,” says Galbraith. “During the day it looks like a coloured surface on the road, but at night it reflects back light cast on it from vehicle headlights, so that to the approaching driver, the surface of the road appears to light up.”

Zebrabright combines methyl methacrylate reactive paint (MMA) with embedded white clusterbeads, a technology is unique to Prismo. After acquiring Roadline and Nightsite in 2008 – two methyl methacrylate reactive paint technology products from Leigh Paints – the company has been able to develop its portfolio with Clusterbead in conjunction with the high durability of the MMAs.

“Zebrabright projects light back at the approaching driver, highlighting the white surfacing in the pedestrian crossing and not relying on ambient street lighting or purpose-built lighting to illuminate surfaces,” says Galbraith.

Clusterbead creation

High quality glass beads form the basis of the technology, says Prismo technical director Steve Owens.

“Zebrabright projects light back at the approaching driver, highlighting the white surfacing in the pedestrian crossing.”

“It is a cluster of high index glass beads, approximately 2mm in size, which is applied to the surface of a durable two component Methyl Methacrylate white road marking system. A further application of high quality glass beads is added after. The result of the system is a highly reflective zebra crossing white pad that gives greater than 700 mcd/lux/m² dry night time visibility and greater than 100 mcd/lux/m² wet night time visibility.”

The same technology is also used in the company’s Clusterline product, a cold plastic MMA for enhanced dry and wet night visibility.

“This system has been tested on the accelerated turn table in Germany’s BASt laboratory for the highest wheel passages as per BSEN1436 of four million to a P7 category,” says Owens.

“The hard wearing characteristics will increase the durability three times longer than any standard thermoplastic road marking.”

Into the light

In 2006 an accident black spot along Nottingham city centre’s Wells Road was highlighted as a problem area in a road safety scheme. During the previous five years, almost 50% of accidents involved pedestrians. Improvements involved a new road surface, a raised zebra crossing and enhancement of pedestrian crossing lighting.

In 2007, however, it was reported that 13 people were killed every day on Nottinghamshire’s roads and so a new Nottingham Road Safety Partnership was established to ensure an even more focused approach to casualty reduction. Nottingham City Council and Nottingham County Council made were two of the authorities involved with this accident prevention scheme.

Nottingham City Council targeted two zebra crossings on St Ann’s Well Road, which joins The Wells Road to the city centre.

“They wanted the crossings to be durable, highly visible during the night and also in wet night time conditions,” says Owens. Based on the previously-proven success of Prismo’s Clusterbead technology the council agreed to trial the new Zebrabright product.

“They wanted the crossings to be durable, highly visible during the night and also in wet night time conditions.”

The first tests of Zebrabright were carried out in November 2008 using an LTL2000 handheld retro-reflectometer. The results showed the new system increased retro-reflectivity by more than five times the normal standard, which surpassed the expectations of Nottingham City Council senior engineer Richard Childs. “The readings of 750 millicandelas (MCD), was remarkable. We would have been content seeing results more than the normal 150 MCD.”

For Nottingham Council the durability of Zebrabright, along with its extraordinary reflectivity, makes it doubly attractive.

“If we can reduce the need for maintaining worn outlines and hence, save money, this can only be a good thing for the Authority,” says Childs.

The future certainly looks bright for Prismo’s Clusterbead technology.

“Our progression is to make the road environment safe for all users including pedestrians and to reduce accidents in hazardous areas on the road network,” says Owens. “This is only the start of the development programme with this new technology available to us.”