Development of a Lighting System for Pedestrian Pre-Collision System Testing under Dark Conditions

According to pedestrian crash data from 2010-2011 the U.S. General Estimates System (GES) and the Fatality Analysis Report System (FARS), more than 39% of pedestrian crash cases occurred at night and poor lighting conditions. The percentage of pedestrian fatalities in night conditions is over 77%. Therefore, evaluating the performance of pedestrian pre-collision systems (PCS) at night is an essential part of the pedestrian PCS performance evaluation. The Transportation Active Safety Institute (TASI) of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is conducting research for the establishment of PCS test scenarios and procedures in collaboration with Toyota's Collaborative Safety Research Center.

The objective of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a reconfigurable road lighting system to support the pedestrian PCS performance evaluation for night road lighting conditions. First, the test conditions of the road lighting (light intensity and uniformity) are generated by combining recommendations from road lighting design standards and the average measured lighting levels at various crash locations. Then the lighting system is designed based on the desired light illumination level and the uniformity at the ground level. To enable the experimental implementation of various light conditions for PCS performance evaluation, low cost reconfigurable light equipment was designed and implemented. By changing the height and distances of the light poles, and the slope angle of the light fixtures, various road lighting conditions can be created.