Hello everyone, we are two students from Shenzhen Senior High School. Here we show how fluorescent materials can be used on more roads to maximize its potential value like energy - saving, luminescent and oriented properties.
The ideas
According to statistics, the number of traffic fatalities in China reached 29,519 in 2019. Relevant departments always educate citizens to pay attention to traffic safety, but we rarely think about whether there is a latent danger in the design of the road itself.
Nothing goes smoothly all the way, but obstacles could strengthen us. At the very beginning, we planned to design a science video on traffic common sense to remind the public but it lacked of novelty. Once we went to the highway and realized the improper use of fluorescent materials, we altered our plan halfway after several discussions.
After searching for relevant materials and almost determining our topic, in order to better know ubiquitous perspectives of our ideas,we designed a survey on the Internet. Here are some conclusion of our survey. 100% of participants agreed looking at the phones is the biggest man-made traffic problems and 62.5% of them thought design of traffic roads is the problems behind traffic accidents. Fork of the road and crossing road are the places where accidents most probably happen. 75% and 62.5% thought arrows and gradients ramp are the most effective methods to identify the direction of vehicles in the foggy days. 87.5% participants stood for that fluorescence on the edge of the mountain roads can effectively guide the drivers and the most dangerous reasons of mountain road accidents is rugged roads and overspeed. 87.5% of them believed mountain roads are not safe enough now and the same amount of people deemed fluorescence can remind drivers the fork further out. As for the last data, Most of them considered there is safety hazard in the connection of mountain wires now. Based on these data, we identified the problems we found was urgent to be solved and our ideas may be practical. However, this survey is not really significant to our project since we just wanted to see others’ opinions and advice or even identify if our ideas are practical to the public but not establish ideas based on it. We didn’t share it to the top of our bent but just published it on our Wechat and only 8 people participated it. More detailed and accurate data of this survey has been published in our attachment.
Fluorescent materials play a crucial role, to warn passing vehicles to perilous objects or roads, on the highway. But it is rare to see fluorescent materials used on other traffic roads. It spurs us to think how we can maximize its transportation value in more conditions. That is, how to solve transportation problems with fluorescent materials. Thus, we design and renew three kinds of roads with fluorescent materials to show its practical and crucial functions behind the mask.
To make our data and deign more reliable, We went to the real crossroad around our school and did some data measurement and inquired police officers online.
The initiatives
After discovering the existing traffic hazards and determining our theme of how to use fluorescent materials to solve traffic problems, we started our research and study, then determined that the main way to present our final works was video.
First, we checked the data and found that the three high traffic sections were crossroads, mountain roads and highways. So we used 3D design software to make a lot of models to better show our simulated scenes. After several discussions, we have studied the traffic cases and observed the latent problems . We put fluorescent stickers on the ground in three scenarios, crossroads, mountain roads and the fork of highway.the first one, cross roads are what we pay most attention to because they are more ubiquitous surround us. Obvious color of fluorescent materials effectively remind vehicles to speed down in advance. Foggy days disturb drivers and pedestrians to a certain degree for the sake of visual uncertainty. However, with fluorescent materials on cross roads, everything changes. Instead of can’t distinguish where the vehicles come from in the fog, pedestrians can estimate it clearly according to the arrows of fluorescent strips, originated from zebra crossings, they are walking on. Gradient ramp from dark to light can assist pedestrians recognize where they are standing or walking on, avoiding walking on the edge of the sidewalks, where the fluorescent colors are too dark or light in comparison with neutral ones. These innovation is thus an excellent idea that it can greatly warn vehicles and pedestrians by different methods to reduce likelihood of traffic accidents because of visual certainty.
Mountain roads are indeed hazardous and accidents there may probably be some major and deadly accidents. Wire equipments there are too intricate and electrical dangers exist. Apart from that, warnings at the corner of the lanes are always not up the standard since they are not bright enough in the dark or fog. Notwithstanding, fluorescent materials can save electric energy and avoid electrical incidents to a certain degree and prevent vehicles from heavy casualties and accidents because of unconspicuous warnings like falling from the cliffs.
Eventually, we design to use fluorescent materials at the fork of the highway, drivers might be reminded more strikingly which way to go and won’t regret about their errors or even back their cars, which is obviously dangerous on the highway.
After determining all our designs, we began to subtitle the video. The lines were refined so many times that they were dubbed in mid-April, and editing the six-minute video took us two hours. After the dubbing, we edited the video and made special effects. We have published our videos on Bilibili, the most popular video platform among adolescents in China. Two days after we promoted the first video, it already had 160 views. Also we made a PPT and details reports, which are revised for several times.
The above is the whole initiatives of how our group uses fluorescent materials to improve traffic roads. I hope our idea can be supported or even realized, and I hope that there will be less and less traffic accidents in the world.
