Procedure for Measuring the Luminance of Roadway Billboards and Preliminary Results

Abstract

ABSTRACT Advertising media installed in the vicinity of the road may pose a potential threat to road safety. The driver’s perception of advertising depends on a number of factors, including the time of day, the location and dimensions of the medium, the luminance value, and the way the light is emitted. However, the excessive or incorrect distribution of media luminance in the driver’s field of vision, especially at night, may have a significant effect on the disturbance of the visual process. The driver’s night vision is generally adapted to low ambient luminance values, illuminated by vehicle and road lighting. Limiting the emission parameters of advertising by means of luminance values is one of the most common legal requirements in many countries, in the context of consent to the location of advertising on roads. For many years now, billboards with unknown emission characteristics and luminance values have been functioning in Poland. Exploitation of advertising media in the vicinity of roads requires the consent of the road manager to install the advertising media, which so far has not required confirmation of the maximum luminance values obtained. This led to the installation of aggressive advertisements on the roads, which disturbed the drivers. In order to determine whether there is a problem of excessive luminance of media in Poland and how high is the percentage of media, pilot studies were carried out on road sections selected by the research team. In the paper have been presented the results of measurements of light parameters (luminance of the carrier, luminance of the background and calculated contrast) and geometric dimensions of the advertising surface, using the original author’s procedure for 227 advertisements located in selected locations in Poland. The obtained measurement results showed that the permissible luminance levels were exceeded many times in the group of advertisements using LED sources. The authors have proposed to introduce a unified, operational procedure for measuring the luminance parameters of advertising media. The undertaken research is aimed at developing guidelines for road infrastructure managers concerning the reduction of brightness of advertisements located in the vicinity of roads.