Lighting Traffic Ahead: Tunnel Lighting for Hazard Response and Car-Following Safety among Novice Drivers

Abstract

Tunnels create a constrained car-following environment in which rear-end crashes remain a major safety concern. This is especially challenging for novice drivers, who may have difficulty anticipating traffic changes further ahead. Existing warning systems mainly reflect the state of the immediate lead vehicle, while vehicle-to-vehicle approaches for upstream information are limited by technology adoption. This paper investigates an infrastructure-based approach that uses ceiling-mounted tunnel lighting to present beyond-visual-range (BVR) traffic information. A driving simulator study with 24 novice drivers was conducted to evaluate two designs: a headway-based representation of traffic spacing (THW-HMI) and a dynamic-state representation of vehicle deceleration (DYN-HMI). The results showed that both HMIs were associated with earlier braking responses, larger temporal safety margins, and lower subjective workload than baseline. Outside the emergency events, car-following behavior remained comparable across conditions. These findings indicate that infrastructure-based ambient cues may contribute to safer tunnel driving for novice drivers.