Controlling driver over-speeding with a persuasive and intelligent road marking system

It is widely acknowledged that majority of road fatalities may be attributed to human behavior and in particular issues regarding driver over-speeding. Although there has been a number of campaigns aimed at improving driver behavior, the issue still persists and is of great concern. Perhaps, addressing issues that are attitude and behavior related is a challenge. However, persuasive technologies have proven to be successful in addressing health behavior issues, yet it has received little attention on issues relating to road safety. This study therefore attempts to address one of the main causes of road accidents: driver over-speeding. It proposes a novel intelligent road marking system that will persuade drivers to change their speeding behavior. An intelligent switching system that consist of an Arduino microcontroller with a speed sensor, LED and a GSM shield are used to detect the speed of on-coming vehicles. The microcontroller regulates the color of the intelligent markings to either red or amber depending on the speed of the vehicle. Current studies on the prototype indicates that it has the potential of changing driver behavior. Future work will focus on how to implement the prototype on a large scale to measure its longitudinal effect on driver behavior.