Measuring the effect of the rainfall on the windshield in terms of visual performance
Section snippets
Road safety under rain
Rain may affect driving performance, and since the beginning of automotive transport, car designers have considered this issue. They have proposed countermeasures in order to reduce the impact of rain as early as 1903, when Mary Anderson proposed the first patent for a windshield wiper (Anderson, 1903). In addition to wipers, rain effects are also mitigated by improved windshield design, automotive lighting and road lighting. Considering the high impact of rain on vision, and even though the
Materials and methods
Based on our literature review, we have considered the rain falling on the windshield as the main factor which reduces the visual performance in driving. An experiment was conducted in order to quantify the reduction of visual performance through rain with respect to two reference driving tasks: the detection of an object on the road and reading a road sign. This experiment was conducted in a laboratory under controlled artificial rain. Two levels of rain intensity were compared, as well as two
Target detection performance
An ANOVA with Word and Rain as within-participants factors (Word (2) × Rain (3)) showed an effect of the contrast class as expected (F(8,312) = 222.22; η2 = 0.85; p < .05), as well as an effect of the rain level (F(2,78) = 29.75; η2 = 0.433; p < .05), and an interaction between contrast class and Rain (F(16,624) = 2.82; η2 = 0.068; p < .05).
After removing the “no rain” condition, in an ANOVA with Word, Rain and Wipers as within-participants factors (Word (2) × Rain (2) × Wipers (2)), the effect of the wipers was found
Discussion
A methodology was developed, in order to assess the performance of a driver visibility system through rain. The system consists in two parts: first, a laboratory system, where calibrated rain can be produced in order to simulate rain over a car's windshield, in a dark tunnel, under controlled illumination. The second part of the methodology consists in an experimental protocol. Two visual tasks have been selected, one related to hazard detection (target detection), the other related to road
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Jérome Cazard, Jean-Luc Bicard and Philippe Morange, who participated to the rain system settings and experiment passing, Eric Dumont for helpful discussions on the manuscript, and Stéphane Jourdain (Valeo) who supplied the wipers. This work was partially supported by the SURVIE FUI project.
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