Fundamental Visibility Assessment for Probeam Road Lighting

The present study proposes a novel road lighting system that uses pro-beam light distribution. The visibility performance afforded by conventional road lighting has raised concerns about conflicts between road lighting and vehicle lighting, and the visual contrast of the pedestrian is known to depend on the relationship between the driver’s position and the pedestrian’s position. Pro-beam road lighting is a foundational solution for enhancing the visibility of pedestrians crossing the road. In the present study, the authors developed a proposed pro-beam luminaire that uses existing LED lamps and is designed to adjust the pro-beam road lighting distribution to achieve an ideal distribution. The visibility performance of the proposed pro-beam road lighting was evaluated by 16 young participants seated in a car on a test track. A field experiment found the visibility performance of the proposed pro-beam lighting in the longitudinal direction of the road to be higher than that of conventional road lighting. In addition, the present study revealed that vertical illuminance at the height of 0.8m strongly correlates with the average subjective visibility value. According to this relationship, two light distributions for the pro-beam road lighting were examined to improve the weaknesses of the proposed pro-beam road lighting. In the near future, commercial pro-beam road lighting that improves the visibility performance of roads in urban areas should be designed.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND40 Standing Committee on Visibility.
  • Authors:
    • Hagiwara, Toru
    • Kusatake, Daiki
    • Kouko, Shunsuke
    • Todoroki, Makiko
    • Hamaoka, Hidekatsu
    • Okajima, Katsunori
    • Kobayashi, Shoji
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2018

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 18p

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01656601
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 18-01159
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Jan 19 2018 12:20PM