The following article has been written by Howard Redwood for the motorists' publication Driving. Published December 2010.


All Things Bright and Debatable

In the UK, the standard measure of road safety appears to be benchmarked against data collected from those incidents reported to the Police. The most noteworthy are logged under ‘Killed or Seriously Injured’ (KSI), and indeed, although these figures have reduced somewhat in the last decade, it is widely agreed that there is scope for improvement. The trouble is, nobody seems to be able to define true aims and objectives and so the ‘scope’ creeps wider and wider. The local authorities have their idea of the scope, but this is different to the road safety training bodies.

Due to the chasm in the ‘scope’, we now have a whole proliferation of other outside bodies trying to sell into the road safety industry. These outside organisations may have good intentions, but their main intention, often using ‘Unique Selling Points’ (USPs)  is to get the attention of the unsuspecting consumer by delivering a bias message of perceived benefits. In many cases, because our aims and objectives towards road safety are so ‘cloudy’ the perceived consumer benefits are of little or no practical help in the reduction of the KSI figures.

Anyone, including our own UK Government, can get ‘hoodwinked’ into a decision, which to all intents and purposes, is merely someone else’s commercial gain. Yet again, the UK has been sucked in to some rather dubious EU legislation.

From February 2011, all new production-line vehicles will include Daytime Running Lights (DRLs). Seems like ‘a bright idea’ until you do some research to find that a number of EU countries have already reversed the legislation due to the fact that their KSI figures jumped by between 6% and 12%! This was mainly due to an increase in pedestrian and cyclist deaths.

Surely, lighting up a vehicle will make it more conspicuous and therefore much better protection for the occupants – you know - the occupants who are already protected by a safety cage, airbags, impact protection zones, and seat belts? What you are probably not aware of is that the DRLs have to be set at a light output of 1200 candela (cd, or candle power) – which is 50% brighter than a dipped headlight!

One of Newton’s Laws of Physics states, ‘For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction’. This law normally refers to forces acting on a body. However, could this mean that for every vehicle you can see, there must be something which you cannot see? Dr Peter Heilig, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Vienna seems to think so:

‘The capacity of our cognitive processing has a natural limit, but in traffic situations which are rich in detail, although the first essential moments are captured in the “gist of a scene”, an activity, like too many lights, causes overcrowding, distracting and irritating the thought and concentration processes’.

 So then, Austria, who incidentally reversed the EU legislation because their KSI went up by 12% due to the introduction of DRL, have realised a phenomenon called ‘information overload’, where the brain misses crucial information, producing incidents of ‘Looked but Failed to See’! Where have we heard that before – oh yes, that would be the reason behind most injuries to the pedestrian, cycle and motorcycle fraternities – the very subject of the UK Government’s THINK! campaign, designed to protect the vulnerable road user. It is clear that DRL will only increase the conspicuity of any vehicle with stronger lights, shifting attention away from any casual traffic scene. Part of the Compulsory Basic Training (CBT) for moped and motorcycle riders currently champions the use of dipped headlights during the day in order to protect their own vulnerability. This action, until now, has been regarded as best practice because there is currently no DRL pollution. Despite the intention to allow this more vulnerable group a safer passage, they are still involved in incidents where a driver of another vehicle fails to see them! What is going to happen when DRL comes in to force, when all vehicles will eventually have lights so bright that Britain’s roads will look like the landing approach to an airport runway?

What about the case for pedestrians and cyclists? Children are always encouraged to wear reflective materials, but as Professor Peter Heilig explains:

‘Reflecting materials appear to be ineffective in connection with DRL.  The illumination of bicycles suffers from systematic misconception:  With decreasing daylight intensity, front and rear vehicle lights attract the attention of other traffic participants; however cyclists are hard to observe and to detect against a darkening background.  The average bicycle illumination does not protect at all against the risk of (fatal) side impacts.  

So, is the Government’s new perception of road safety to put unnecessary lights on to vehicles so that we can shine them at the on-coming driver, or the driver in front, distract them, making them miss the crucial anticipation links which would normally protect the more vulnerable? You would be forgiven for thinking so, because we have another problem! The growing problem of ‘High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights, also known as Xenon (pronounced Zennon). These are being fitted to vehicles in increasing numbers, but the worst culprits are the retro-fit upgrades.

Xenon lights are a newer generation of headlight that can be as much as three times brighter than the more traditional standard halogen fitting. Xenon bulbs contain Xenon gas, which produces a more uniform intensity allowing drivers to see the road more clearly. This is good if the lights are set correctly. The problems arise with the levelling mechanism and the fact that the light emitted is towards the ultra-violet end of the light spectrum.

Dr. Edgar Leuenberger, Asian Eye Institute Glaucoma and Cataract specialist says;

‘The use of xenon lights comes with a degree of responsibility. For someone with minimal Cataract condition’, he says with emphasis, ‘the severe blinding glare caused by xenon lights can cause temporary blurry vision that may lead to accidents.’

Further studies, made in 2003, by Mainster and Timberlake from the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Kansas Medical Center, reveal that three types of ‘eye disability’ exists from glare:

·         ‘veiling disability’ occurs when a light source reduces the contrast of a visual target by superimposing light on the visual target’s retinal image. An example would be to look at a person standing in front of a sun-filled window. The body resembles a dark silhouette despite the abundance of light.

·         ‘dazzle disability’ occurs when a bright light concentrates towards the viewer’s central field of vision, changing the contrast between lighter and darker details of a visual target’s foveal image. An example is when on-coming headlights fill more space than they should, making it difficult for the viewer to make distinction between darkness and light.

·         ‘scotomatic disability’ occurs when a brilliant light source decreases visual sensitivity, or “puts a retinal area out of business”. An example is an extremely strong light quite often in the blue wavelength, like a flash from a camera causing rapid bleaching of the retinal eye receptors. It can take some time to recover from this.

Due to the nature of the intensity of the xenon light and to some extent Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), incorrect horizontal and vertical positioning can cause all three of the above ‘disabilities’ to take place. The xenon system relies on a ‘floating’ system which responds to sensors on the vehicle’s suspension. The problem with this is that the horizontal plane responds in a reactive measure – slightly after the wheels have left the dip in the road. This late response brings the lights up when the vehicle is on a higher plane causing one of the three dazzling effects. The xenon system has no scroll switch for manual adjustment, and thus relies on the manufacturer’s factory setting. The retro-fits are a problem, unless the consumer has technological software to read the vehicle on-board computer data, the lights will almost certainly be in-correctly set.

The current MOT regulations do not adequately cover the testing of the xenon system. Manufacture data produced by two manufacturers, makes it abundantly clear that to set a xenon system, the vehicle must be moving at 2.8mph. The current MOT system does not allow for this, therefore MOT agents have to allow the vehicle through on the factory setting. Our MOT system should be robust enough to be able to deal with any technological advances, but it clearly is not.

In September this year the UK government declared that it wished to bring certain laws back into the realms of ‘common sense value’. This is all that has been asked by Roy Milnes from Drivers Against Daylight Running Lights (DaDRL) for over a decade. DaDRL and Blinded Bi-Xenon have now amalgamated to form Lightmare.Org in a common stance to lobby the UK government to get some aims and objectives back into the scope of road safety. This stance is echoed by the DIA, who in turn would like to see the Minister for Transport rescind the EU legislation on the issue of daylight running lights, and to revise the legislation concerning Construction and Use, so that we can be sure that any vehicle on the road will not be capable of killing someone through faulty light settings.

As with all requests to the government to get anything changed, there has to be a movement of like-minded people behind it. Visit: www.lightmare.org  to see all the other organisations that are behind the proposals.

Something has got to change. Shining very bright lights at each other is not road safety, it’s stupidity, but we want to do something about it. If you would like to help, please visit: www.lightmare.org  and add your name to the on-line petition.

Acknowledgements:

Dr. Edgar Leuenberger, Asian Eye Institute; Dr Peter Heilig, Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Vienna; M.A Mainster & G.T Timberlake, Dept. Ophthalmology, University of Kansas.