Road Markings: A Pioneering Approach to Greater Safety

Product Story - When darkness falls, road safety is a serious concern. If wet weather and mist are added in the equation, the accident risk is even higher, but there is a number of extremely effective ways for dealing with these dangers. These include highly effective reflective road markings. The reactive resin DEGAROUTE® is a basic component of such markings, thus contributing toward saving lives in road traffic.

The statistics tell the whole story. Roughly one-third of traffic accidents involving injuries happen at night, although only 20 percent of all traffic flows after dark. Expressed in absolute terms, the figures appear even starker. About 40,000 people die each year on the roads of the European Union, and 1.7 million more are injured. Apart from the human tragedy underlying the bare statistics, the economic losses are immense: The follow-up costs of accidents within the European Union amount to €160 billion per year. Political response has been prompt, and an ambitious goal has been set. According to a White Paper of the European Commission in Brussels, the aim is to halve the number of fatalities by the year 2010.

Road markings play an important role in making roads safe: They serve as guides for drivers, showing the way in wet, misty, and dark conditions. To do this they must satisfy the highest standards, providing durable and safe solutions. These requirements are met by what are known as Type II markings, as are used almost universally in Switzerland, for example. These are structured, three-dimensional markings applied to the road in the form of cold plastic. Minute embedded glass beads reflect light from the headlights of vehicles, indicating the way through darkness, rain, and mist and so improving safety. A crucial constituent of this two-component solution is DEGAROUTE®, a reactive resin that Evonik produces at the Wolfgang Industrial Park in Hanau, Germany.

As a binder, DEGAROUTE® ensures fast processability on the road and the durability of the road markings. These cold plastic safety markings are thus increasingly sought by road construction authorities. “The trend is quite clearly toward cold plastics,” confirms Dr. Harald Guder, CEO of Limburger Lackfabrik GmbH, the German market leader in production of road marking materials. At this company, 40 employees produce about 12,000 metric tons of road marking materials annually, which are exported to every part of the world. Among customers who rely on the cold plastic road marking materials from Diez, near Limburg, are the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l‘Automobile), which uses them for its Formula One races on the Hockenheim and Nürburg tracks, and the operators of many airports, including Frankfurt, where the Type II markings guide ground traffic on the airfields.

Among the reasons for the trend toward cold plastic is the long service life of the road markings resulting from the special formulation of the DEGAROUTE® reactive resin. “Formerly, the markings had to be redone up to twice a year. With DEGAROUTE® reactive resin as the basic component, they‘re good for up to six years. This is particularly important in areas of heavy traffic where more than 80,000 vehicles use the road each day. The only solution here is to provide thick-layer markings such as cold plastic,” says Guder.

This is confirmed by independent testing by the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BaSt) in Bergisch Gladbach, where a number of different road marking materials were applied on a giant test surface and run over by tires millions of times in long-term tests. The results show clearly that cold plastics containing DEGAROUTE® reactive resin show far less abrasion than other markings. Their durability and safety have also been repeatedly confirmed in practice, and recognized in the U.K. by a road safety award. On a stretch of motorway near the city of Chester, road engineers applied a structured road marking material with DEGAROUTE® and embedded glass beads for reflection. The result was a 50 percent reduction in traffic accidents after four years, for which the British trade journal Highways Magazine designated the structured DEGAROUTE® based marking Road Safety Product of the Year.

Cold plastic safety markings are basically of three types: flat markings, profile markings, and structure markings, containing embedded glass beads of diameter up to 1.5 millimeters. Flat markings, applied in thin layers, are used mainly where mechanical stress caused by rolling traffic is low, as on sparsely traveled roads, or for edge markings. Profile and structure markings, both with embedded reflecting glass beads, are applied on the road in thicker layers with thicknesses of up to three millimeters. They offer additional safety advantages because the structuring can dissipate moisture so that the glass beads reflect light without hindrance. In addition, the glass beads within the structuring are not easily destroyed by rolling traffic or the steel edges of snow plows. In particular, the glass beads at the edges of a structure marking remain intact and their reflecting action is unaffected. The glass beads are ideally embedded to a depth of 55 to 60 percent of the thickness of the finished road marking. “This is the right depth for an optimal balance between firm embedding and attainment of the correct optical properties and light reflection,” explains Harald Guder. Titanium dioxide is also mixed into the cold plastic; in combination with the glass beads it acts like a mirror, significantly improving light reflection.

Apart from safety and durability, cold plastic technology has the additional advantage of fast processing, thanks to rapid curing of the marking at the site. “The reactive resin is cured by polymerization,” explains Dr. Peter Neugebauer, head of Marketing and Technical Customer Service for Road Marking at Evonik. “To initiate this process, a starter is added to the DEGAROUTE® reactive resin. This is actually peroxide, which triggers curing of the road marking.” This curing is quicker in the cold plastic process than in the thermoplastic process, where heating and fusion of the road marking are required. “This is of particular interest to roads departments,” says Harald Guder of Limburger Lackfabrik, “because they want minimum interference with the flow of traffic. The quicker the site’s back in use, the better.” The safety factor again comes into play here because sites where road markings are applied are local accident hot spots, and treating them rapidly contributes significantly to traffic safety. And the environment can also breathe a sigh of relief because the traffic jams resulting from application and maintenance of road markings are reduced,
and that means a reduction in CO2 emissions.

What works well on the road is also highly suitable for use in other areas. “The excellent properties achieved on roads by the DEGAROUTE® based cold plastic process have led to increased demand for markings in other areas such as bikeways, car parks, and pedestrian zones,” says Peter Reinhard, head of the Road Marking Product Group at Evonik, giving an example: “The Indonesian government has launched a program for improving safety on school routes.
The School Safety Zone Program was initiated in Surakarta on the Indonesian island of Java. As an initial pilot project there, we laid a pedestrian crossing for school children in the signal color of red. For the markings, the Indonesian authorities decided on a cold plastic solution using DEGAROUTE®.” This exemplary safety measure has been well received, and the program has now made further progress.

“The program covers 18 pilot projects,” says Meng Yeow See Teoh, of Technical Customer Service for Evonik in Asia. “This marks the start of its implementation in state schools in all provinces of the country.” The program is supported by UNESCAP (the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) and WHO (the World Health Organization).

The examples show that, in a number of countries from the EU to the Far East, structured road and area markings are now recognized as an important step toward the goal of higher safety in road traffic—and that the way to this goal is marked with cold plastic technology.

About Evonik
Evonik Industries is the creative industrial group from Germany which operates in three business areas: Chemicals, Energy and Real Estate. Evonik is a global leader in specialty chemicals, an expert in power generation from hard coal and renewable energies, and one of the largest private residential real estate companies in Germany. Our strengths are creativity, specialization, continuous self-renewal, and reliability. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world. In its fiscal year 2008 about 41,000 employees generated sales of about €15.9 billion and an operating profit (EBITDA) of about €2.2 billion.

Alexandra Boy
Corporate Press
Phone +49 201 177-3423
Fax +49 201 177-3030
alexandra.boy@evonik.com

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Evonik Industries AG
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45128 Essen
Germany
www.evonik.com

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