Safety Benefit of Marking light - an empirical study

Philip Stroop1, Alexandra Koslowski1, Boris Kubitza2, Jacek Roslak2

1 L-LAB; 2 Hella KG Hueck & Co  Germany

Keywords:      Marking Light, Safety, Recognition Distance

Introduction

According to a report of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) [1] 42% of the accidents with fatal injuries in Germany take place at night, two-thirds on rural roads without street lighting. Hence only the headlamps of the car are responsible for the lighting of this environment. There may be various reasons for accidents at night e.g. alcohol or fatigue. The elimination of such confounded effects is very difficult. Sullivan and Flannagan [2] have isolated these effects by using a high sophisticated design. They identified a factor of 4.14 for the increase of risk of pedestrian accidents in darkness.

Marking light can increase traffic safety by highlighting pedestrians in dangerous situations. But it is uncertain in which distance pedestrians must be recognized by the sensor, to get a safety advantage in comparison to low beam. And it is not clear, how detection distances increase by additional sensor sensitivity.