Road damage threatens driving safety, making timely maintenance essential. However, conventional repairs require on-site personnel, necessitating traffic control and lane closures. These restrictions cause traffic congestion, leading to unnecessary idling and repeated acceleration and deceleration of vehicles, reducing fuel efficiency and increasing energy consumption. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes a method for performing inspections without lane closures, utilizing machine vision and AI-based damage detection technology. Furthermore, to quantitatively verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an energy consumption analysis is conducted using the traffic simulator simulation of urban mobility (SUMO) and the vehicle energy simulator future automotive systems technology simulator (FASTSim). Results show lane closures reduced average speed by 25% and increased driving time by over 40%, adding 5044.73 L of fuel for gasoline vehicles and 3208.63 L for diesel vehicles, with CO₂ emissions rising by 11.86 and 8.60 t, respectively. In contrast, the proposed method had minimal traffic impact, with less than 0.1% increases in fuel use and emissions. This approach enables simultaneous multi-lane inspection, improving maintenance efficiency and reducing social costs and energy waste caused by traffic control.

Black ice poses a serious winter road-safety hazard because its transparent appearance and localized formation make dangerous pavement conditions difficult to detect before vehicles enter affected areas. Converting this hidden low-temperature risk into visible surface information is therefore important for intuitive driver warning and road management. In this study, groove-filling thermochromic polyurea-based composites were fabricated using aliphatic polyurea resin, reversible thermochromic pigment (R.T.P.), and silica sand, and their colorimetric response, mechanical properties, and groove-filling applicability were investigated. Considering visual response and mechanical performance, the mixture containing 10 wt.% binder and 20 phr R.T.P. was selected as the most balanced candidate. For this mixture, the CIE L*a*b* values changed from 58.36, 3.85, and 13.32 for the control specimen to 47.82, 22.95, and 8.52, respectively, indicating a darker and more reddish appearance. The maximum compressive and flexural strengths were 10.13 MPa and 6.20 MPa, respectively. In addition, the selected mixture retained its low-temperature color response in the groove-filled state, confirming its preliminary groove-filling applicability. These results suggest the potential of thermochromic polyurea-based composites as visual-warning pavement materials for winter road safety.