Nighttime Visibility

Pavement Markings – Regulations / Standards

At this time, there are no federally required minimum levels of retroreflectivity for pavement markings. On April 22, 2010, a standard for maintaining minimum retroreflectivity of longitudinal pavement markings was published as a notice of proposed rulemaking in the federal register. The comment period closed August 20, 2010. If you are interested in the status of this rulemaking, please see the latest report on significant rulemakings under Federal Highway Administration, Pavement Markings.

On April 22, 2010, a standard for maintaining minimum retroreflectivity of longitudinal pavement markings was published as a notice of proposed rulemaking in the federal register. Comment period closed August 20, 2010.

• MUTCD Notice of Proposed Amendment – Federal Register Notice [HTML, PDF ]
  Proposal for a standard for maintaining minimum retroreflectivity of longitudinal pavement markings published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2010. This document, developed as part of the rulemaking process, provides the background and detail explaining the proposal.
  

• MUTCD Language – Maintaining Pavement Marking Retroreflectivity:
  This link shows the proposed pavement marking retroreflectivity MUTCD text. Note that this proposal was named Revision 1 to the 2009 MUTCD at the time this NPA was published. Since that time, FHWA published Revisions 1 and 2 to the MUTCD, unrelated to pavement marking retroreflectivity. Amendments are numbered in the order that final rules become effective, therefore the actual revision number for pavement marking retroreflectivity will not be assigned until a final rule is published.

• Summary of Proposed MUTCD Retroreflectivity Pavement Marking Standard:
  This brief summarizes the technical details of the 2010 Notice of Proposed Rulemakings. [Publication No. FHWA-SA-10-015]

• Revised Assessment of Economic Impacts of Pavement Marking Retroreflectivity:
  Final Report: Revised Assessment of Economic Impacts of Implementing Minimum Levels of Pavement Marking Retroreflectivity. This updated report estimates increased costs of 3.2 percent of the current costs to implement the improved retroreflectivity of longitudinal markings in the proposed rulemaking. [Publication No. FHWA-SA-10-16]

For hard copies of documents with publication numbers, please send a request to report.center@dot.gov and include the publication number and title, along with the number of copies and your mailing address and phone number. Requests will be filled based on availability.

For information about traffic control devices and the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), other than visibility or retroreflectivity, please see FHWA's MUTCD website