Development of Computer Simulation Programs for Road Illuminance With Headlamps

Road visibility is an important problem in traffic safety. We are developing a computer simulation program to evaluate road visibility with headlamps for night driving. The simulation program under development aims to indicate visually the various changes in visibility.

Road visibility changes in a complicated manner due to road alignment and facilities. This paper presents a computer simulation program which can express road alignment and road illuminance in perspective, as the first stage of the project.

The features of the simulation program are that it can set up road alignment in accordance with a real road, and that it can set up at any horizontal or vertical alignment and superelevation, and also that it can deal with the shadow zone where the light of headlamps is shut off by guard rails and dazzle protection facilities.