Effects of Automotive Interior Lighting on Driver Vision

Abstract

There has been growing interest in vehicle interior lighting for both functional and aesthetic purposes. Although there is a large body of research on nighttime driver vision and vehicle exterior lighting, there has been little research attention to vehicle interior lighting. This report includes a brief review of some of the research that has been done, and presents the results of a nighttime field study that was performed to contribute to the understanding of how vehicle interior lighting affects some basic aspects of driver vision. Participants in the study were asked to perform two tasks while seated in a stationary experimental car on a closed test road at night: 1) detecting pedestrians on the road ahead, and 2) rating the subjective brightness of a reflected veiling light on the windshield. The veiling light was varied in both luminance and color. The results indicated that pedestrian detection was closely related to photopic photometric measures, suggesting that the pedestrian task was influenced primarily by cone photoreceptors, while the rating of subjective brightness appeared to show an influence of rod photoreceptors. These results have implications for how the photometry of vehicle interior lighting should be performed in order to best correlate with driver visual performance. Future research should further quantify the effects observed here and investigate changes in retinal adaptation associated with automotive interior lighting.

Investigation of flashing and intensity characteristics for vehicle-mounted warning beacons

“…Under nighttime conditions, a peak intensity of 200 cd resulted in asymptotic response times, and higher-intensity lights were not detected more quickly. In comparison, Flannagan et al (2008) reported that a peak intensity of 1000 to 2000 cd was necessary during daytime conditions when the warning beacon was located about 45 o from the line of sight. This peripheral angle was substantially larger than those studied by Rea and Bullough (2016), who used peripheral angles up to 5 o on the bases that the principal viewing angles for warning beacons were no larger than 5 o (Howard and Finch, 1960), and drivers’ gaze locations were rarely more than 5 o from the road ahead (Mourant and Rockwell, 1970).…”

Enhanced Visual Performance for In–Vehicle Reading Task Evaluated by Preferences, Emotions and Sustained Attention

“…For instance, research on capsule hotel lighting by Yu et al explored illumination levels of 150 lx and 300 lx [20], while Chen et al investigated a range from 20 lx to 250 lx in very small spaces, finding optimal comfort at 100 lx before it declined with increased brightness [21]. These variations in research parameters and findings highlight the complexity of adapting lighting studies from conventional to specialized small spaces [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

Lighting a Path for Autonomous Vehicle Communication: The Effect of Light Projection on the Detection of Reversing Vehicles by Older Adult Pedestrians

“…Michael Flannagan and his research team’s work are relevant to our study: Ref. [ 33 ] is in one of their earliest studies we are aware of relating to the role of vehicle adaptive lighting; the authors of [ 34 , 35 , 36 ] studied the precise role of light location, intensity and beam spread. Dawn Tilbury and her team have also made significant contributions to this topic: in [ 37 ], they measured the behavior of pedestrians at crosswalks using an immersive virtual environment and related it to the real world.…”