Research on the impact of the locations of luminaire failure on traffic safety in highway tunnels

Abstract

Objective

The safety of highway tunnels hinges heavily on proper lighting infrastructure, yet luminaire failures pose an ongoing challenge. The study aims at assessing the impact of the locations of luminaire failures on highway tunnels safety.

Methods

The research involved conducting 300 on-site scenarios with 29 participants, with simulated drives in visual recognition experiments. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was applied to assess the individual effects of luminaire failures, luminous flux maintenance rates, and driving speeds on safety, as well as the between-group variability of these effects. Furthermore, Bonferroni tests were conducted to perform post hoc analyses, which determine the specific pairs of group means that differed significantly. Additionally, paired t-tests were used to analyze the impact of the failure locations.

Results

The results show that luminaire failures were the most significant factor affecting safety. Failures near the driver’s side had a more pronounced effect, and symmetric position of failures caused the most significant impact when the same number of luminaire failures occurred. The study also found that the distance between failed luminaires, rather than their specific positions, was the primary determinant of safety impact. Concentrated luminaire failures were more detrimental than scattered ones.

Conclusions

The study concludes that concentrated luminaire failures present a significant threat to tunnel safety, emphasizing the urgency of accelerated maintenance to address such failures and uphold safety standards.