Innovative Solar-Powered LED Road Studs Help Reduce Accidents

The Astucia SolarLite is a self-sufficient, solar-powered LED road stud that significantly boosts night-time or poor weather visibility compared with the traditional road reflector.

The built-in LEDs automatically illuminate after dark providing drivers with up to 900 m or about half a mile of visibility, 10-times greater than the traditional reflective road stud which relies on being illuminated by headlight beams, which at best has a useful range of 90 m or 255 feet. The increased visibility given by the road stud extends reaction times when driving at 100 km/h / 62MPH from 3.2 to over 30 seconds.

Produced and marketed by a division of the British Clear View Traffic Group, The SolarLite studs are now in use in about 120 locations across the UK, in the Netherlands, France, Australia and in South Africa. The company says that road safety authorities have reported reductions in night time accidents of well over 70% in some cases since the installation of the “smart” road studs. -Continued

For example, on the twisting A143 at Haddiscoe in Norfolk, England, there were previously 22 recorded accidents in a three year period, two of which involved loss of life. In the two years since SolarLite studs were installed there were only five recorded accidents, all of which were minor and none occurred in the dark.

In South Africa, in previous years, 88 serious accidents had claimed 27 lives and 15 less serious accidents had occurred on a twisting 34km section of the road between Melmoth and Ulundi. After the installation of 7,800 Astucia ‘smart’ road studs the accident rate fell to zero. The provincial government of Kwazulu-Natal estimates that the cost of the 103 accidents before the Astucia studs were installed was some 27 million rand. The installation of the studs cost 5 million.

In addition with current LED studs, Clear View Traffic Group is also working on the next generation of smart road markings which can automatically illuminate to warn of bad weather or slow-moving traffic ahead, or can help reduce motorway hold-ups by automatically marking additional lanes to boost capacity.