Evaluation and analysis of tunnel lighting service status based on driving safety

Abstract

Objective

The service status of tunnel lighting has an important impact on driving safety. Existing research mainly discussed the impact of a single evaluation indicator of lighting service status on driving safety and paid less attention to the impact of multiple evaluation indicators on driving safety.

Methods

In this research, field tests of tunnels in three speed scenarios and 52 service scenarios are completed. DIALux software was selected to simulate more intensive illuminance, which could be used to calculate U₀, U₁, q_c, and C. Using U₀, U₁, q_c, and C as explanatory variables, and applying the normalized visual recognition results as explained variables, ordinary least squares regression (OLS) was performed to calculate the influence weight of each explanatory variable on driving safety.

Results

The results show that the four independent variables occupied different weights under different working conditions. However, on the whole, U₀ and U₁ occupied a greater weight. The weight of C lies between q_c and U₀, and U₁ and q_c occupied the smallest weight in all scenarios. Locally, U₀ was greater than U₁, with the exception when the illumination attenuation value was 70%.

Conclusions

The influence of the total uniformity of the road surface luminance and longitudinal uniformity of the road centerline luminance on driving safety was significantly greater than the influence of the contrast revealing coefficient and luminance contrast C on driving safety. When the luminous flux was attenuated to 70% or less and when the number of failed lamps was at least four, the lighting quality would be significantly reduced, which would substantially affect driving safety.

Keywords:

• Tunnel lighting
• service status
• safe driving
• driving safety factor

Author contributions

Xiaoxia Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Rupeng Wen: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Kun Cheng: Visualization, Investigation. Meng Yang: Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the experiments and funds of National Engineering Laboratory for Highway Tunnel Construction Technology (The project No. is 2019YFB1600702).