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Visual Performance During Night Driving
Technical Paper
986045
Sector:
Language:
English
Abstract
Driving by night is known to be more dangerous than during
daytime. In addition, a lot of drivers complain about vision during
night driving. This is the first cause of driving restriction for
seniors.
The needs for lighting systems improvement concern safety and
comfort. This relies on a certain knowledge about visual
performance of the driver.
The characteristics of the visual environment of night driving
and the physiology of vision at low photopic luminance level give
clues to the improvements to reach. A specific experimental setup
is developed in order to measure the visual performance and fatigue
while driving and without interrupting it. This test is based on
the measure of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. The visual
fatigue is estimated from the evolution of the results to the tests
versus time.
Average drivers are asked to drive at early night (avoiding
drowsiness) on open roads in order to compare several frontlight
systems. Experiments lasted 3 hours of driving. Each driver tested
three lighting systems, and then drove 9 hours in three nights.
A classification of the systems is obtained in terms of visual
performance of the drivers.