Yellow outlines on signal backplates

[realjd]

Florida has gone universally to black housings with retroreflective yellow backplates, a change from the previous black housing with black backplates on east and west facing lights. I like them. They make the signals stand out more.

[UCFKnights]

Florida has gone universally to black housings with retroreflective yellow backplates, a change from the previous black housing with black backplates on east and west facing lights. I like them. They make the signals stand out more.

Was that what the old system was? It seemed like it was entirely random before, with one intersection being the east/west road, the next being the north/south road, some roadways it was always the more major roadways, then many of course just had none at all.

[Ian]

Bristol, PA seems to be the only municipality in the US to use these white borders: https://goo.gl/N2mWov

Not too far from there in New Hope, PA, there are more of those signals with the reflective white tape on their backplates.



I definitely like these better than the yellow ones.

[ET21]

I've seen them here in Illinois, and I'm of the opinion they are a waste.  If you can't see the far brighter lights, you've got a problem.

US-20 just west of Rockford uses the yellow backdrop for the signals at Winnebago and Pectatonica. However I have seen them pop up in the burbs (one is at Grand Ave off of I-294). Rural uses would make more sense to make sure people notice them in darker/foggier areas, but urban uses seem a little much considering all the light.

[freebrickproductions]

The only yellow backgrounds here in Alabama that I'm aware of are in Hoover, AL.

[Jet380]

I like the backplates we have here, a thin white stripe for a nice clean look 


They also have the outline on the back, which helps you see the lights that are facing away from you, if for some reason you wanted to.

[MASTERNC]

DelDOT has one thin yellow backplate on a recent installation on Naamans Road.  Oddly, another signal replacement on nearby US 202 is just plain black.

[jakeroot]

They probably figured that yellow was more easily visible against the sky, which can sometimes contain white clouds.  Yellow prismatic sheeting/labeling material is probably just as common and easy to find as white, so they probably chose yellow.  All of this is speculative on my part, of course.

I'm guessing it is because the original Canadian research on reflective backplate borders only used yellow?

Both of these points make sense to me. My only real question now is whether or not the color was part of the reduction in crashes, or just the reflective nature of the border. The South Carolina report seems to indicate that the borders are most helpful at night. And in my opinion, I think white might be superior for that time of day (after all, as I've said about a million times thus far: white is more reflective than yellow).

In case it isn't obvious, I would like to see white studied at some point.

I definitely like these better than the yellow ones.

As do I. I think they look cleaner.

[jwolfer]

I think the point of the reflective background is to make them visible at night if the electricity is out.. So drivers would know and intersection has a traffic light. They are supposed to be treated like 4 way stop.. But very few do

[Revive 755]

Rural uses would make more sense to make sure people notice them in darker/foggier areas, but urban uses seem a little much considering all the light.

There is not always much light after a major storm knocks out the power - though this is slightly less of an issue nowadays given how many signals now have battery backups.

[jakeroot]

Although yellow signals have been commonplace in parts of Canada for several decades, it turns out that ICBC (the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) and the BCMOT were responsible for the first implementation of a reflective yellow border, first installed in Saanich, BC in 1998. The backplates were already yellow (BC adopted yellow backplates in the 1980s, following the lead of, I think, Ontario), but they were pitch black at night. They installed the reflective edging around the existing backplate, which helped improve the visibility at night. This practice of yellow backplates + reflective edging continues today (both in BC and in other provinces).

The original study was prompted by the sheer number of collisions occurring in BC at signalized junctions. The opening hypothesis was pretty straightforward: color conspicuity of roadway signage must be maintained under all lighting conditions. Signal backplates weren't part of this requirement (they aren't technically signs), so ICBC and the MOT studied applying the same retroreflective requirements to backplates.

Also, answering my own question from earlier, the yellow border was adopted because the Canadian MUTCD recommends yellow backplates to differentiate the signals from the background. If the Canadian MUTCD recommended another color for the backplates (such as black), I suspect that white may have been the original color studied.


photo mine

Here's the original study on reflective borders, for any who are interested: http://goo.gl/OtpDik