The visibility of a pavement marking is determined by the amount of light reflected off the marking’s surface to a driver’s eye. During daylight hours, marking visibility is achieved through light from the sun striking the marking surface and scattering in all directions, some of which reaches the driver’s eyes. However, in dark environments at night (without roadway lighting), vehicle headlamps produce most of the light striking a pavement surface, and therefore the retroreflective properties of the pavement marking govern the amount of light that reaches the driver’s eyes.

Retroreflectivity in pavement markings is a measure of the amount of light from the vehicle’s headlamps that is reflected back to the driver’s eyes.

Retroreflectivity is a measure of how efficiently the pavement marking returns light from the headlamps back to the driver. In mathematical terms it is a ratio of the reflected luminance to the headlamp illuminance at a certain viewing geometry. Figure A-1 shows a simple illustration of pavement marking retroreflectivity.