When black markings are used to provide enhanced contrast for white or yellow pavement markings, what widths and patterns of black markings should be used?
The MUTCD is silent on this, other than saying that black may be used with standard color markings to increase contrast with light colored pavements. There are many different practices around the U.S. To highlight broken lines, some states put 1″-2″ black stripes along both outside edges of the line segments, some States fill in the entire gap between line segments with a normal width black line, some put a length of normal width black line in front of the line segment, and some put the black after the line segment. There does not appear to be any research evaluating relative effectiveness of these different practices. Anecdotally, they all seem to be effective in making the white or yellow lines stand out more on a light colored pavement.
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