08 Mar 2007
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Bad driving conditions decrease visibility
Most car and lorry drivers have driven through wet weather conditions that have significantly impaired their visibility of the road ahead.
It is bad enough to have your visibility degraded by heavy rain; it is even worse if this is compounded by spray from other road users. The Transport Research Laboratory was concerned with this issue and wanted to provide guidelines concerning safe driving speeds when confronted with such conditions.
The ATC Human Factors specialists were asked to tackle this problem. Using a combination of field trials and vision modelling, the department was able to predict driver visibility through windscreens as a function of spray and speed. This allowed optimum driving speeds for a range of weather conditions to be determined.
