A study on estimating discomfort glare caused by LED road lights

In this study, the cause of discomfort glare from LED road lights was estimated by means of evaluating the effect of the variables: average glare source luminance, solid angle of the glare source, background luminance and the viewing angle between the glare source and the line of sight. With these 4 variables, 72 different lighting conditions were simulated in a scaled laboratory set-up. Participants were requested to judge the perceived discomfort glare of these lighting conditions using deBoer rating scale. All four variables and some of their interactions had indeed a significant effect on deBoer rating. As such, these results suggest general similarities in discomfort glare between LED and traditional light sources.