By definition, almost all experimental investigations of the impacts of lighting and glare on visibility and comfort while driving involve some degree of artificiality. This artificiality, often involving static test conditions and contrived observation conditions, is a necessary precondition to understanding the impact of specific lighting-related parameters on relevant responses such as target detection distance, target response times, visual discomfort, and readaptation times after exposure to glare. Nonetheless, the use of carefully controlled conditions can also limit the generalizability of results from such studies. Further, an underlying assumption in such studies is that the range of lighting- and glare-related parameters used is representative to those actually experienced by drivers. As part of a study to measure driving conditions and performance under naturalistic conditions, vehicles were outfitted with sensors including an illuminance meter to continuously measure, at 0.1 s intervals, the vertical illuminance approximately incident upon drivers' eyes. The present paper analyzes data from that study to provide a quantitative description of actual exposure characteristics during oncoming vehicle passing situations on two-lane unlighted, undivided highways for the drivers participating in this study. Such data can be incorporated into the design of subsequent psychophysical investigations in order to help provide a meaningful basis for the choice of lighting conditions in such investigations. The data described here, of course, represent only a small subset of the driving locales and conditions that would be broadly representative of driving in North America, much less so for other regions of the world. Nonetheless, these data provide some benchmarks about what illuminance ranges are possible in a natural driving context.
Characterizing oncoming headlamp illumination
Charakterisierung der Scheinwerferbeleuchtung des Gegenverkehrs
2005
10 Seiten, 3 Bilder, 21 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch