2019 Volume 5 Issue 2 Pages A_134-A_141
The present study proposes a road lighting system that uses pro-beam light distribution. The visibility of a pedestrian who is crossing the road and is illuminated by a conventional road light is known to depend on the relationship between the driver’s position and the pedestrian’s position. Pro-beam road lights are a fundamental solution to the problem of enhancing the visibility of pedestrians crossing the road. Based on the author’s previous studies, the present study presents two novel types of pro-beam luminaires that incorporate LED lamps to show a slightly different light distribution and reveals the effects of these pro-beam road lights on the visibility of pedestrians crossing the road at night. The study includes two experiments. One is a field experiment to evaluate the visibility performance of these pro-beam road lights at a test track. The other is a laboratory experiment that uses images to determine when pedestrians crossing the road are detected. The two types of pro-beam road lights were found to afford considerably greater visibility performance in the driving lane than conventional road lights provide.
