These orange highway stripes may debut in California, which could be the end of the classic yellow lines. Road traffic safety interventions are constantly underway, being piloted and tested in order to investigate increasingly innovative ways to keep all road users safe. While changes to driving laws and increasing unlawful driving conviction penalties are effective at reducing instances of road traffic accidents, these are not the only solutions to making the roads safer.
Keeping the roads safe with harsher penalties
This year alone has seen numerous new driving legislations being passed by local authorities, with many pertaining to harsher driving convictions and penalties. Tightening driving laws is often a resort that authorities are forced into when drivers continue to not take on a motive of personal responsibility to protect their fellow road users. As such, authorities need to threaten drivers with harsh penalties and convictions if they choose to continue to disobey the laws of the road.
Harsher convictions are being implemented across locations, including increasing fines, increasing the severity of how a certain road traffic offence is classified, adding a conviction of jail time, and license suspension. While fines are the standard penalty for traffic offences, critics have argued that they unfairly target low-income drivers, as the driver’s income is not taken into account when issuing fines.
When you fail to pay a fine, you can not only be issued with another fine for failing to pay, but you may also have to pay interest on the original fine. When a driver continues to fail to pay for their fines, this can then result in a license suspension. For low-income drivers, this can continue to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and could see them lose their employment if they no longer have access to a license. In order to resolve these concerns, many authorities are looking at implementing novel approaches to driving convictions that are not based on a fining system.
California tests these orange highway stripes
Other road traffic safety prevention methods include making the roads themselves user-friendly for drivers and other road users. In 2020, California’s transportation department received approval to add to the classic white and yellow lines seen on highways orange stripes on a four-mile segment of Interstate 5 north of San Diego within a work zone as a means to pilot whether or not the orange color is effective at increasing visibility of the highway markings while construction is in progress on the roads by adding the orange highway stripes next to the regular highway markings:
“I thought the easiest thing would be to leave that normal striping alone and use orange as a contrast color,” Brian Hadley, a Caltrans engineer overseeing the project, told Route Fifty in 2022.
Survey data over the past five years has highlighted how the added color assisted as much as 83% of road users in being more aware that they are travelling in a construction zone.
Ensuring responsible driving behavior at all times
Whether authorities increase penalties for unlawful driving behaviors or continue to pilot safety intervention programs such as the orange highway stripes, the most effective safety prevention tactic for road user safety is the personal responsibility and standard a driver holds themself to.
While road accidents can occur by a ‘freak-of-nature’ occurrence, most road accidents can be entirely preventable if road users ensure that they follow the laws of the road. This means not cutting corners when it comes to all legal driving practices, such as taking it upon yourself not to speed by any amount when on the road, always indicating and checking your blind spots, not consuming any alcohol when driving, staying updated on changes to road legislation, and ensuring that your vehicle is roadworthy.
