Citation

Peña-García A, de Oña R, García PA, de Oña J. Ergonomics 2016; 59(12): 1596-1605.

Affiliation

TRYSE Research Group, Department of Civil Engineering , ETSICCP, University of Granada , 18071 Granada , Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00140139.2016.1161246

PMID

26942500

Abstract

Daytime Running Lamps (DRL) on vehicles have proven to be an effective measure to prevent accidents during the daytime, particularly when pedestrians and cyclists are involved. However, there are negative interactions of DRL with other functions in automotive lighting, such as delays in pedestrians' visual reaction time (VRT) when turn indicators are activated in the presence of DRL. These negative interactions need to be reduced. This work analyses the influence of variables inherent to pedestrians, such as height, gender and visual defects, on the VRT using a classification and regression tree as an exploratory analysis and a generalized linear model to validate the results. Some pedestrian characteristics, such as gender, alone or combined with the DRL color, and visual defects, were found to have a statistically significant influence on VRT and, hence, on traffic safety. These results and conclusions concerning the interaction between pedestrians and vehicles are presented and discussed. Practitioner Summary Visual interactions of vehicle Daytime Running Lamps (DRL) with other functions in automotive lighting, such as turn indicators, have an important impact on a vehicle's conspicuity for pedestrians. Depending on several factors inherent to pedestrians, the Visual Reaction Time (VRT) can be remarkably delayed, which has implications in traffic safety.

Language: en