An Extensive Field-Based Assessment of Exterior and Interior Noise and Vibration Across Longitudinal Rumble-Strip Designs

Rumble strips (RS) are cost-effective safety countermeasures that reduce certain types of crashes by providing audible and vibratory warnings when vehicles drift from the travel lane. However, they often cause annoyance to nearby residents, resulting in complaints to transportation agencies such as departments of transportation. Prior studies have evaluated only a limited number of RS designs and configurations, relying primarily on A-weighted decibels (dBA), which have been shown to be insufficient for assessing annoyance responses. This study comprehensively evaluated 26 RS designs, including one at a complaint location, covering sinusoidal, raised, and cylindrical shapes with different configurations: continuous shoulder rumble strips (SRS; 10 designs), bicycle-gap SRS (6 designs), and centerline rumble strips (CLRS; 10 designs). RS designs were tested using two vehicle types at three speeds. The experimental design included assessing exterior noise following AASHTO TP-98-18 at two distances using different metrics, one-third-octave-band analysis, and the annoyance-focused low-frequency corrected sound pressure level (LA′) employed in RS studies. To ensure safety effectiveness, interior noise was assessed following SAE J1477. Additionally, vibration was evaluated using ISO 2631-1 frequency-weighting filters (Wd, Wk), which better account for human vibration perception. Approximately 792 valid runs were conducted. Results showed that sinusoidal RS produced the lowest exterior noise increments relative to the no-rumble-strip baseline, consistently below 10 dBA, while maintaining sufficient interior noise and vibration levels. At the complaint location, the measured exterior noise increment exceeded the 10 dBA above-baseline threshold at 480 ft. This study reinforces the effectiveness of sinusoidal RS as a superior alternative to other RS designs, despite implementing low-frequency content penalties.