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Road surface marking is any kind of device or material that is used on a road surface in order to convey official information. They can also be applied in other facilities used by vehicles to mark parking spaces or designate areas for other uses. Road surface markings are used on paved roadways to provide guidance and information to drivers and pedestrians. Uniformity of the markings is an important factor in minimizing confusion and uncertainty about their meaning, and efforts exist to standardize such markings across borders. However, countries and areas categorize and specify road surface markings in different ways. Road surface markings are either mechanical, non-mechanical, or temporary. They can be used to delineate traffic lanes, inform motorists and pedestrians or serve as noise generators when run across a road, or attempt to wake a sleeping driver when installed in the shoulders of a road. Road surface marking can also indicate regulation for parking and stopping. There is continuous effort to improve the road marking system, and technological breakthroughs include adding retroreflectivity, increasing longevity, and lowering installation cost. ==History== In the United States, the first documented use of a painted center line was in 1911 along Trenton's River Road in Wayne County, Michigan.〔 According to the state of Michigan, the idea of using a painted center line was conceived in 1911 by Edward N. Hines, the chairman of the Wayne County, Michigan, Board of Roads, after watching a leaky milk wagon leave a white trail along a road. Hines was inducted posthumously in 1972 into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Honor for his innovation, and was honored in 2011 with the first Paul Mijksenaar Design for Function Award.〔 In 1917, the idea of using painted center lines on rural state highways was conceived and/or put into action in at least three states (Michigan, Oregon, and California), apparently completely independent of one another. At some point in 1917, a white highway center line was painted along "Dead Man's Curve" on what is now County Road 492 in Marquette County, Michigan,〔 under the direction of Kenneth Ingalls Sawyer, who served as engineer-superintendent of the Marquette County Road Commission. Sawyer was inducted posthumously into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Honor in 1973. In Oregon in April 1917, a yellow center line was painted down the center of the Columbia River Highway, between Crown Point and Multnomah Falls, at the direction of Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy Peter Rexford. Later in 1917, the same line was continued west of Crown Point.〔 Rexford first conceived the idea of a yellow center line in early 1917 while riding on a bus from Salem, Oregon on a dark and rainy night, and advocated it as a safety measure on the Columbia River Highway, which Rexford patrolled as a traffic officer. When Multnomah County declined to fund the project, Rexford's boss, Chief Deputy Martin T. Pratt (later elected Sheriff), paid for the paint out of his own pocket so that the center line could be painted.〔 Rexford later described the April 1917 line as the "first yellow center line ever painted on pavement" in the United States.〔 An article published in ''The Oregonian'' upon Rexford's retirement claimed that a contest with a $10,000 reward was once held to determine the originator of the highway center line, but the contest was scrapped when information from Europe revealed that ancient civilizations had used white bricks to mark the center lines of their streets.〔 In the fall of 1917, Dr. June McCarroll of Indio, California developed the idea of white center lines and began advocating for their use, after she was run off the road by a truck while driving along a highway that would later be incorporated into U.S. Route 99. Dr. McCarroll soon communicated her idea to the local chamber of commerce and the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, with no success. She then took it upon herself to hand-paint a white stripe down the middle of the road, thus establishing the actual width of the lane to prevent similar accidents. In 2002, a portion of Interstate 10 was designated and signed as "The Doctor June McCarroll Memorial Freeway" in her honor.〔 The question of which color to use for highway center lines in the United States enjoyed considerable debate and changing standards over a period of several decades. By November 1954, 47 states had adopted white as their standard color for highway centerlines, with Oregon being the last holdout to use yellow.〔 In 1958, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads adopted white as the standard color for the new interstate highway system. The 1971 edition of the ''Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices'', however, mandated yellow as the standard color of center lines nationwide. The changeover to the 1971 MUTCD standards took place between 1971 and 1975, with most done by the end of 1973, so for two years drivers still had to use the old and new. Yellow was adopted because it was already the standard color of warning signs, and because it was easy to teach drivers to associate yellow lines with dividing opposing traffic and white lines with dividing traffic in the same direction. In turn, this simple mnemonic device greatly reduced head-on collisions and improved road traffic safety. The major downside to the MUTCD white-yellow system is that yellow has slightly less contrast than white, especially at night, so for maximum contrast, bright yellow—and highly toxic—lead chromate was used to paint yellow lines through the end of the 20th century. As a result, U.S. transportation workers must take special precautions when disturbing or removing yellow lane markings. In England, the idea of painting a center white line was first experimented with in 1921 in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham. Following complaints by residents over reckless driving and several collisions, the Sutton Coldfield Corporation decided to paint the line on Maney Corner in the area of Maney. In 1971, a correspondent for the ''Sutton Coldfield News'' wrote an article in the newspaper recalling the event. In November 2014, a glow-in-the-dark bike path inspired by Vincent van Gogh's ''The Starry Night'' was created with luminous paint in the Netherlands with the intent to reduce urban light pollution. Today, road markings are used to convey a range of information to the driver spanning navigational, safety and enforcement issues leading to their use in road environment understanding within advanced driver assistance systems and consideration for future use in autonomous road vehicles. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Road surface marking」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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