Driver Eye Reactions to Work Zone Lighting

Researchers conducted field studies to assess how drivers’ eyes react to typical temporary work zone lighting configurations currently being used in Texas. Researchers hypothesized that nighttime work operations would have a measurable effect on driver pupil size, and that the size would change as drivers approached and passed through the work operation. Assuming that nighttime work operations with widely variant light levels may decrease safety, researchers hoped to devise a process that could be used while driving through a work zone to indicate where pupil size changes were likely to occur so that some type of remedial action could be taken with the lighting sources to reduce such pupil size variability. Overall, the results of the field studies were somewhat mixed. On the one hand, it was not possible to devise a process to use illumination, luminance, or luminance intensity data obtained while driving through a work zone to indicate where pupil size changes were likely to occur so that some type of remedial action could be taken with the lighting sources to reduce such pupil size variability. It is believed that the continuous process of the driver eye focusing back and forth on both near and far-away illumination sources is not adequately captured through simply illumination measurement techniques such as was used in this study. On the other hand, several general trends in terms of driver pupil size and pupil size variability were either verified or uncovered as a result of these field studies.