Effect of headlights during daytime, dusk, and night-time on drivers' visual perception

Abstract

The effect of headlight based on human have been traditionally focused on visual perception for perceiving vehicles. This effect of visual perception by the driver is a major contributory factor to accidents. An experiment was conducted to explore the driver's accuracy to see the approaching vehicles at junction with headlights on or off and to identify the interaction between headlights, types of vehicles, and times of the day (daytime, dusk, and night-time) for the driver visual perception. Behavioral visual experiment was conducted on 20 subjects using the images stimuli of vehicles at a junction in different time of days based on the real-life driving situation. The results suggested that car and motorcycle are perceived differently with the presence of headlights. Vehicles were also found to be comparatively limited perceiving during dusk, but with certain difference characteristics between car and motorcycles, indicating the importance of headlights in the said situation. The study would help to improve understanding the important of visual perception in road safety in preventing any incident from occur and provide useful information for driving education and training programs.