Illumination Requirements for Gaze Perception

Abstract

Road lighting in residential and mixed-traffic areas should provide a feeling of safety to pedestrians. Among the critical visual tasks that support judgement of intentions, percep tion of gaze direction has been found to be the most difficult. Question now is which road lighting conditions are needed to enable a good-enough perception of another's' gaze direction. This study describes an experiment which collected perceived gaze dir ections for 30 participants under 5 levels of vertical illuminance and 3 levels of horizontal illuminance. Gaze perception was shown to be highly significantly dependent on vertical illuminance level, but not on horizontal illuminance, or observer age. Based on the findings, for road lighting in residential areas, a minimum vertical illuminance level of 3.6 lux is recommended, independent of the required horizontal illuminance level.