Effects of Exterior Lighting System of Parked Vehicles on the Behaviors of Cyclists

It is an essential task to promote communication between vehicles and their surrounding road users to avoid potential traffic accidents. With the development of lighting technologies, it is becoming possible for vehicles to display more detailed information to other road users in an easier way. An exterior lighting system was, therefore, proposed to display warning signals from parked vehicles on the road surface to call for the attentions of cyclists. By displaying warning signals in either a flashing or an animation way, it is expected that the cyclists can be informed of the door opening and reversing actions of the parked vehicles, even when their focus is not on the vehicles. However, it is still unclear that how the cyclists will react to the displayed signals. This study, therefore, performed a field experiment with 12 participants to investigate the influences of the proposed system on the behaviors of cyclists. It was observed that the median values of the avoiding distance to the parked vehicles could be improved to the recommended safe distance when the exterior lighting system was applied, especially for the participants without driving licenses. Meanwhile, the stress of the cyclists could be reduced, and the awareness to the actions of parked vehicles could be improved while using the system.