Nighttime driving: visual, lighting and visibility challenges

Abstract

Purpose Nighttime driving is dangerous and is one of the most challenging driving situations for most drivers. Fatality rates are higher at night than in the day when adjusted for distances travelled, particularly for crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists. Although there are multiple contributory factors, the low light levels at night are believed to be the major cause of collisions with pedestrians and cyclists at night, most likely due to their reduced visibility. Understanding the visibility problems involved in nighttime driving is thus critical, given the increased risk to road safety. Recent Findings This review discusses research that highlights key differences in the nighttime road environment compared to the day and how this affects visual function and driving performance, together with an overview of studies investigating how driver age and visual status affect nighttime driving performance. Research that has focused on the visibility of vulnerable road users at nighttime (pedestrians and cyclists) is also included. Summary Collectively, the research evidence suggests that visual function is reduced under the mesopic lighting conditions of night driving and that these effects are exacerbated by increasing age and visual impairment. Light and glare from road lighting and headlights have significant impacts on vision and night driving and these effects are likely to change with evolving technologies, such as LED streetlighting and headlights. Research also highlights the importance of the visibility of vulnerable road users at night and the role of retroreflective clothing in the ‘biomotion’ configuration for improving their conspicuity and hence safety.

Active Road Studs as an Alternative to Lighting on Rural Roads: Driver Safety Perception

“…Despite these apparent benefits, the survey also found a residual demand for further street lighting to be provided. This would support the suggestion that drivers rely most heavily on their photopic visual acuity, and that situations in which mesopic vision is important such as night driving are more problematic, particularly for elderly users [56,57]. Establishment of a fully lit road network would be impractical both in cost and environmental terms and in this regard compromises are inevitable.…”

Ubiquitous Computing: Driving in the Intelligent Environment

“…Based on research on autonomous or non-autonomous cars, on different communication technologies, on decentralized and centralized connectivity [45,46], we have concluded that there is a rich cluster of information and interaction produced between vehicles and other road entities. In the Solution section, we are going to explore a dynamic visualization [47] of road information in terms of predictive weather conditions [48], visibility [49,50] and outdoor illumination [51,52] and potential sun glares [53,54] at the future moment of passing through that area, with markings on possible hazards [55,56], for a better trip planning. We chose this kind of information compared to the better-known real-time crowd sourced [57] traffic data, as an example of a novel cluster of visualized road information.…”

Disability glare and nighttime driving performance among commercial drivers in Ghana

“…Driving performance can be severely impaired at night due to low (mesopic) illumination. 9,10 Visual challenges associated with nighttime driving is further worsened by the headlights of on-coming vehicles. [11][12][13][14] Straylight from headlights can reduce retinal image contrast which manifests as either dazzling glare or scotomatic glare.…”