Friday, August 9, 2013

Information On Traffic Lines And Its History

By Andrea Davidson


Traffic lines, or road surface marking is the term applicable to the material or device that is used on the surface of the road for the purpose of conveying official information. It can also be applied on various facilities that accommodate vehicles in their parking spaces. It may also be used to designate certain areas for various other uses.

These lines are often used on paved roads so that proper guidance will be given to the drivers and the pedestrians. Uniformity is quite important so that confusion will be kept to a minimum. There are countries that will categorize and specify the road surface markings in varying ways.

There are different variations of these things as they can be permanent or not. They can also be non mechanical or mechanical. Other purposes include the delineating of traffic lanes, to serve as info providers to the pedestrians and to serve in generating noise when running across the road. It can also be used to wake sleeping drivers when these are on the road shoulders.

More purposes include regulating stopping and parking. To this very day, there are continuous efforts that strive to improve this system as much as possible. So far, there are a lot of notable technological breakthroughs, among them being the increased longevity, the lowered installation cost and the addition of retroreflectivity.

Historically speaking, one of the first documented use of these markings was way back in 1911 in Wayne County, Michigan. The idea was conceived by Edward N. Hines, who happened to be the chairman of the Board of Roads within Wayne County, Michigan. For this innovation, Hines was inducted into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Honor posthumously back in 1972.

Utilizing these things within rural highways was an idea that was conceived in 1917. It was even implemented within three states in the United States. Oddly enough, each of these three states acted independently from each other. They were California, Oregon and Michigan.

Colors eventually became a significant part as the people in charge began to adopted certain colors, such as yellow and white. By November of 1954, there were forty seven states that began to use white as the standard color. Oregon was the last holdout when it came to utilizing yellow. Eventually it was mandated that yellow be used as the standard color of all center lines throughout the entire country.

It was successfully adopted in other countries as well. In the very beginning, there were numerous complaints of reckless driving in England, even going back to the early days of the automobile. Although regarded as an experiment at first, it yielded such results that the entire country subsequently adopted its use and other foreign countries followed suite.

As one can clearly tell, the history of traffic lines is extensive but relatively new. Some may find it uninteresting, but there is little doubt about its informative nature. To this day, it has several uses for the benefit of pedestrians and drivers alike. It is often overlooked by most people in modern day society, but the numerous beneficial results cannot be denied.




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