In Korea, drivers should come to a complete halt and proceed cautiously when encountering a school bus displaying its red warning lights and other safety features, a requirement that is often disregarded in practice. The reason for this might stem from a lack of awareness about the law, and we set out to investigate whether an innovative lighting system employing road projections or VMS could encourage compliance. We found that while 63% of drivers in surveys indicated they would correctly stop when approaching a stopped school bus, in driving experiments, we found that only 18% of drivers did. Our study also uncovered a knowledge gap, with just 53% to 60% of respondents correctly answering basic about the purpose of existing lighting and laws related to school buses. With on-road experiments, when we introduced road projection systems for enhanced non-connected vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, we found that understanding would increase and compliance could increase by up to 77% (from surveys) and 93% (in road tests); these findings underscore the potential of road projections or potentially VMS as effective V2V tools for enhancing road safety in proximity to school buses.

In this exploratory study on school bus lighting, two surveys were undertaken: one targeting school and daycare staff as well as parents of schoolchildren, and the other aimed at general drivers. Our results show that many Korean drivers are not familiar with the purpose of the existing lights on school buses, however, when exposed to advanced lighting concepts using variable message signs (VMS) and road projections through surveys, notable improvements in understanding of these warnings lights were measured and compliance was increased to 77%, from a reported 60% with the existing lighting. It was also found that textual-based systems were more effective than those without text. These results underscore a compelling argument for implementing variable message signs or road projections as tools for driver-to-driver communication. Such measures have the potential to enhance safety and foster compliance with traffic regulations in the vicinity of school buses, or potentially other, road situations.