00822751

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/1773-14

http://scholar.google.com...orak&publication_year=2001

Pedestrians and bicyclists are the most vulnerable of all participants in traffic. Their safety at night should be a priority for headlamp designers, rule-making agencies, and consumers alike. A disturbing trend--the use of very dark aftermarket headlamp covers on vehicle headlamps--is emerging. This trend is observed primarily in sports cars owned by young drivers. These dark headlamp covers, often referred to as blackouts, serve no real purpose other than that of supposedly enhancing vehicle appearance. For a driver using such headlamp covers at night, it may appear as though the overall visibility is not much affected. However, this perception is misleading and wrong, as will be clearly demonstrated. The objective was to quantify the detrimental effects dark headlamp covers have on pedestrian visibility. To do so, detection distances were obtained in the field using 15 observers who were approaching stationary pedestrian mockups. The independent variables were pedestrian size (child, adult), diffuse clothing reflectance (dark, light), and illumination (with and without headlamp covers). Clothing reflectance turned out to have the strongest effect on the detection distance, closely followed by the factor of illumination. The conclusions that can be drawn from the work presented are simple. Nighttime pedestrians should not wear dark clothing, instead they should wear white or reflective clothing, and motorists should not drive with dark headlamp covers at night.

This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1773, Part 2: Bicycle and Pedestrian Research.

English

p. 114-126

2001

Transportation Research Record

0309072336

Figures (7) ; Photos; References (22) ; Tables (6)

Clothing; Headlamps; Low beamed headlamps; Luminance; Night visibility; Pedestrian safety; Reflectivity; Sports cars

Headlamp covers

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 28 2002 12:00AM

• ACCURACY OF NUMERICAL RECTIFICATION OF VIDEO IMAGES TO ANALYZE BICYCLE TRAFFIC SCENES
• ADVANCE YIELD MARKINGS: REDUCING MOTOR VEHICLE-PEDESTRIAN CONFLICTS AT MULTILANE CROSSWALKS WITH UNCONTROLLED APPROACH
• BUILDING COMMUNITIES WITH TRANSPORTATION
• CYCLING TO WORK IN PHOENIX: ROUTE CHOICE, TRAVEL BEHAVIOR, AND COMMUTER CHARACTERISTICS
• DEVELOPMENT OF RUMBLE STRIP CONFIGURATIONS THAT ARE MORE BICYCLE FRIENDLY
• ESTIMATING PEDESTRIAN EXPOSURE PREDICTION MODEL IN RURAL AREAS
• METHOD OF IMPROVING PEDESTRIAN SAFETY PROACTIVELY WITH GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS: EXAMPLE FROM A COLLEGE CAMPUS
• MODELING THE ROADSIDE WALKING ENVIRONMENT: PEDESTRIAN LEVEL OF SERVICE
• OPERATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INLINE SKATERS
• RELATING SEVERITY OF PEDESTRIAN INJURY TO IMPACT SPEED IN VEHICLE-PEDESTRIAN CRASHES: SIMPLE THRESHOLD MODEL
• SAFETY EFFECTS OF MARKED VERSUS UNMARKED CROSSWALKS AT UNCONTROLLED LOCATIONS: ANALYSIS OF PEDESTRIAN CRASHES IN 30 CITIES (WITH DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE)
• SCANNING "EYES" SYMBOL AS PART OF THE WALK SIGNAL: EXAMINATION ACROSS SEVERAL INTERSECTION GEOMETRIES AND TIMING PARAMETERS