Influence of flux reduction system on environment, visibility and safety of drivers

A. Bacelar and B. Beaucamp, Centre d’Etudes Techniques de l’Equipement, France

Keywords

road lighting, public lighting, reduction of luminous flux, visibility, road safety, dynamic public illumination, user acceptance, hemisperical targets

Abstract

Last years, energy savings in lighting became a more and more important subject. As a matter of fact, cities, regions and most generally people who are in charge of public lighting try to perform energy savings but what about user considerations? In other words, there are really few experimentations concerning the evaluation of users towards the use of equipment for the reduction of luminous flux.

This paper presents experimentation with observers, who were asked to assess the visibility of targets on the road surface under different levels of illumination (promoted by lower energy use).

The first experimentation has taken place at the University of Sao Paulo Campus, IEE_USP, Brazil and this paper describes another one, which takes place in a private site in France.

In both places, a luminous flux reduction system is installed. These experimentations intend to show how luminous flux reductions influence people behavior and to approximate minimum visibility levels for a safety and comfort purpose.

In the presented conditions, a visibility level of 4 was considered sufficient to have a good recognition of objects (visibility) in suburban roads with small traffic and good weather.