TRANSPORT
Poor road lighting putting drivers at risk
Driving at night in New Zealand is almost three times more dangerous than other developed countries and poor road lighting is a significant factor a lighting industry expert says
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ew Zealand highways are lit to only three quarters of the levels enjoyed in the UK, Europe and the US, notes Strategic Lighting Partners Ltd Managing Director Godfrey Bridger. “And our residential streets are lit to as little as a quarter of the lighting levels in other developed countries,” he adds. “It should come as no surprise that the risk of death and injury from driving at night in New Zealand is 5.8 times the risk from driving during daylight hours, whereas amalgamated international statistics show night-time driving carries only twice the risk of daytime driving in other countries.” He says three years ago New Zealand researchers Mike Jackett and Bill Frith of Opus International Consultants discovered that for every 0.5 candela per square metre increase in lighting levels on the roading “midblock” between intersections the injury crash rate fell by 33 percent. “Furthermore, findings from new international research indicate that white LED road lighting can provide better, safer driving vision than the yellow lighting emitted by the high-pressure sodium lights currently used in New Zealand.” Strategic Lighting Partners (SLP) has been gathering international research on lighting and road safety for several years, and its evidence shows that with better road lighting New Zealand could reduce its night-time road fatalities and injuries by more than 10 percent. This in turn would save about 20 lives and about 500 other road users from injury each year, while substantially reducing the estimated $1.2 billion annual cost to the country of nighttime road deaths and injuries. “Transport and motor vehicle accidents are the main cause of teenage death worldwide, the
Strategic Lighting Partners Ltd Managing Director Godfrey Bridger: “Research indicates white LED road lighting can provide better, safer driving vision than the yellow lighting emitted by the high-pressure sodium lights currently used in New Zealand” third leading cause of loss of life in the US overall and the fifth leading cause of death in New Zealand overall,” Mr Bridger notes. The social cost of road crashes in New Zealand was estimated in 2007 to be $3.8 billion and with 40 percent of crashes occurring at night this suggests that night crashes cost NZ $1.2 billion. “Factoring in savings from greater energy efficiency and reduced maintenance requirements, we estimate a $700 million New Zealand-wide upgrade to modern road lighting would return a benefit-cost ratio substantially better than the 2.5 benefit-cost ratio for our Roads of National Significance that are costing $9.7 billion,” Mr Bridger says. There’s an enormous saving in human suffering and misery which isn’t captured in these statistics, he notes. “And when you consider the opportunities that a digital lighting infrastructure and new smart city technologies offer local government in terms of new community friendly services and sources of revenue, a national road lighting upgrade is a no-brainer.”
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Lighting lacking Road lighting is such a small proportion of the overall cost of building and maintaining the national road network that it tends to “fly under the radar” and suffers from little attention. For example, the Ministry of Transport’s excellent road safety strategy Safer Journeys makes no mention of road lighting despite going into detail on other important issues such as driving age, road markings, and alcohol. Mr Bridger admits New Zealand hasn’t been alone in overlooking the benefits of upgrading its national road lighting network as road safety policymakers worldwide are overlooking the importance of road lighting to road safety. “We could find no evidence of a systematic strategic asset management approach which incorporates quantifiable safety performance to road lighting worldwide, apart from Canada and Washington State in the northwest US.” Three years ago Mr Bridger wrote a report on the issue with fellow SLP director Bryan King entitled Lighting the Way to Road Safety – A policy blind-
spot? that was developed from a longer, broader-based report for the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) entitled Strategic Road Lighting Opportunities for New Zealand. “Our report was intended to alert transport authorities worldwide, but especially in New Zealand, to the need for greater focus on road lighting to save lives, save energy, improve security, reduce negative environmental impacts, and save money overall.” He believes their work is finally starting to pay off after the consultancy ran two international conferences in Auckland over the past two years, featuring international experts on lighting, energy efficiency and road safety. “NZTA recently introduced changes designed to encourage road controlling authorities in New Zealand to introduce modern LED road lighting, although the change was motivated more by efficiency considerations than safety.” Leading international researcher on road lighting and Director of the Centre for Infrastructure Based Safety Systems at Virginia Tech Transportation June/July 2015