Bobsy Arief KURNIAWAN^*, Yoshio NAKASHIMA, and Mamoru TAKAMATSU

Graduate School of Science and Engineering for Education, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama 930-8555, Japan

(Received September 25, 2007; Accepted February 25, 2008; Revised December 19, 2007)

Road signs must provide a conspicuous signal to a wide variety of drivers over a broad range of environmental and geometric conditions. Recently, there are an increasing number of applications in which light emitting diodes (LEDs) are used as the light source, including critical transportation signaling. In the presence of fog, the resulting visual signal is disturbed due to light scattering by airborne water droplets. By measuring LED brightness with human spectral sensitivity in various densities and various droplet sizes (10, 30, 50, and 100 μm), it is understood that the particle size distribution (fog droplet size) and density of fog does affect visibility in fog. The colored LEDs that contain a yellow component had high brightness evaluation, blue component had low brightness evaluation in all densities and different droplet sizes. The result in this paper can contribute to air and land traffic safety and the prevention of accidents.

Key words: visual perception, brightness matching, LED light, low visibility, dense fog, fog droplet size

^*E-mail address: capture62@yahoo.co.jp