Feb. 4, 2013 Newspapers are filled with stories describing
reductions and removal of street lighting in order to reduce
municipal costs. Tackling the tricky questions of when and where
to install roadway illumination is a challenge for
transportation agencies. Estimating nighttime crash reductions
from roadway lighting is difficult in part because lighting
tends to be installed along with other improvements like traffic
signals or channelization, which makes it hard to isolate the
benefits of lighting. Still, many believe that roadway lighting
can improve visibility at night and that these improvements can
provide drivers with increased time to respond to potential
hazards. Previous efforts to relate visibility from roadway
lighting to nighttime driving safety have been hampered by
limited available data and by lack of consideration of vehicle
headlights. Working to overcome these limitations, Lighting
Research Center (LRC) director and professor Mark Rea and senior
research scientist John Bullough, collabora