Traffic Sign Effectiveness

Visual salience is the perception that renders some
objects in the world to stand out from its given environment
and immediately grab our attention. For the
design of road signs, visual salience plays a significant
role. Studies reveal poor salience of traffic signs
contribute to the increase of traffic violations. With the
aid of eye-tracking technology (analyzing visual fixations
and saccadic patterns of licensed drivers), this
paper will examine the visual salience and effectiveness
for the redesign of two specific road signs. We
hypothesize remodeling the optical characteristics
will improve visual attention for a given background
and thus, reduce the number of traffic violations and
ensure public safety.