Improving the Conspicuity of Trailblazing Signs for Incident Management

This report describes efforts to design and evaluate a new sign design for emergency route trailblazing in a two-part series. The first part involved an off-road field experiment designed to determine the best sign color combination, letter stroke width, and letter size for the sign. The second part involved using an instrumented vehicle and survey questionnaire through a construction zone-related detour. The independent variables of interest were sign color combination, age, and visibility condition. The report includes conclusions and recommendations for more appropriate sign designs.