U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology
Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations
| REPORT |
| This report is an archived publication and may contain dated technical, contact, and link information |
 |
| Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-14-051 Date: July 2014 |
Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-14-051 Date: July 2014 |
PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®
The Federal Highway Administration's Office of Safety Research and Development focuses on conducting research that promotes a safe driving environment while offering practical considerations to address the needs of practitioners. Roadway lighting offers significant safety benefits but also represents a substantial share of the operating budgets of agencies tasked with maintaining the lighting infrastructure. Therefore, there is a need to optimize the safety implications and budgetary considerations.
This report describes an in-depth effort to assess the impact of roadway lighting on the overall safety performance of roadways. To accomplish this goal, the research team collected thousands of miles of real-world roadway lighting data and compared the varying lighting levels, roadway characteristics, and traffic volumes with crash history information. This comparison required extensive data manipulation and the use of geospatial linkages to pull the data together in a useable form. A robust statistical analysis of the underlying relationships among these data revealed the effects and limits of lighting on the overall roadway safety performance.
The results of this report were used to develop a proposed set of adaptive lighting criteria to assist jurisdictions in making sound safety-based decisions when considering adaptive lighting approaches. In addition, this is the most robust analysis of real-world lighting data conducted to date and is intended to serve as the foundation for future roadway lighting analyses.
Monique R. Evans
Director, Office of Safety
Research and Development
Notice
This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for the use of the information contained in this document. This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation.
The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers' names appear in this report only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document.
Quality Assurance Statement
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement.
Technical Report Documentation Page
| 1. Report No.
FHWA-HRT-14-051 |
2. Government Accession No. | 3 Recipient's Catalog No. | ||
| 4. Title and Subtitle
Design Criteria for Adaptive Roadway Lighting |
5. Report Date July 2014 |
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| 6. Performing Organization Code | ||||
| 7. Author(s)
Ronald Gibbons. Feng Guo, Alejandra Medina, Travis Terry, Jianhe Du, Paul Lutkevich, and Qing Li |
8. Performing Organization Report No.
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9. Performing Organization Name and Address Virginia Tech Transportation Institute |
10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS) |
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11. Contract or Grant No. DTFH61-13-D-00018 |
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| 12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address
Office of Safety R and D |
13. Type of Report and Period Covered
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14. Sponsoring Agency Code
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| 15. Supplementary Notes | ||||
| 16. Abstract
This report provides the background and analysis used to develop criteria for the implementation of an adaptive lighting system for roadway lighting. Based on the analysis of crashes and lighting performance, a series of criteria and the associated design levels have been developed to provide an approach for light level selection and the adjustability of the light level based on the needs of the driving environment. The data, the analysis, and the developed methodology are all considered in the document. |
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| 17. Key Words
Lighting, Safety, Crash, Adaptive Lighting |
18. Distribution Statement
No restrictions. This document is available through the National Technical Information Service; Springfield, VA 22161. |
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19. Security Classification Unclassified |
20. Security Classification Unclassified |
21. No. of Pages 68 |
22. Price | |
| Form DOT F 1700.7 | Reproduction of completed page authorized |
SI* (Modern Metric) Conversion Factors
| AADT | Annualized average daily traffic |
| ADT | Average daily traffic |
| ANSI | American National Standards Institute |
| CIE | Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage |
| FHWA | Federal Highway Administration |
| GIS | Geographic information system |
| GPS | Global Positioning System |
| HFC | Horizontal foot candles |
| HSIS | Highway Safety Information System |
| IES | Illuminating Engineering Society of North America |
| LCL | Lower confidence limit |
| LOS | Level of Service |
| LZ | Lighting Zone |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| NTDCRR | Night-to-day crash rate ratio |
| RLMMS | Roadway Lighting Mobile Measurement System |
| UCL | Upper confidence limit |
| UR | Uniformity Ratio |
| VTTI | Virginia Tech Transportation Institute |
