Controlling Nighttime Glare

Nighttime highway construction is often advocated to minimize inconvenience for the traveling public and to reduce the potential for work zone accidents. However, poor utilization and placement of the lighting equipment to illuminate the work zone can cause glare that is dangerous to drivers and workers.

With the goal of making nighttime construction zones safer, ICT researchers have analyzed and compared the levels of glare and lighting performance generated by typical as well as innovative lighting arrangements and have identified the factors that affect glare measurement.

This ICT research has provided recommendations for lighting arrangements to reduce and control lighting glare at nighttime work zones. In addition, the study identified a practical method that can be used to measure and quantify glare during nighttime highway construction. A major advantage of this new method is that it saves significant costs by not requiring a pavement luminance meter.

ICT recently published the findings of this study, and the report can be found on the ICT website Publications Page.

Principal Investigators: Kahled El-Rayes and Liang Liu (UIUC)

Image: Using a balloon light in a nighttime work zone.