Specification of Road Traffic Signal Light Intensity 1

Abstract

In a previous communication we reported data supporting the recommendation that a red road traffic signal should have an intensity of 200 cd for optimum recognition from 100 m when the signal is seen against a very bright sky (10⁴cd/m²). This confirmed the earlier result of Boisson and Pagès. The present paper extends the data to include (a) the effect of signal size on optimum signal intensity for a practical range of angular diameters (4.1 to 16.5 min of arc), and (b) the effect of background luminance for a range of luminances of 1.5 ft-L to 2250 ft-L. The results show that optimum signal intensity is independent of signal size and that spatial summation by the visual system is complete. However the same data demonstrate a failure of spatial summation when a conventional threshold criterion (probability of seeing the signal 0.5) is used. It is shown that smaller signals will be more effective than larger ones of the same intensity if their intensity is less than optimum. Optimum signal intensity is shown to be a linear function of background luminances greater than 10 ft-L. A graph relating optimum signal intensity to signalling range for various background luminances summarises the experimental data.

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