Lighting Research and Technology

http://lrt.sagepub.com/ The Trotter-Paterson Lecture 2012: What ever happened to visual performance?
M. S. Rea Lighting Research and Technology published online 9 March 2012 DOI: 10.1177/1477153512441163 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lrt.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/06/1477153512441163 A more recent version of this article was published on - May 11, 2012

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Lighting Res. Technol. 2012; 0: 114

The Trotter Paterson Lecture 2012: Whatever happened to visual performance?

MS Rea PhD, FSLL Lighting Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA

Visual performance has been studied since the 1930s to help establish a foundation for recommended illuminances. Two approaches were taken to research visual performance, one by Weston in Great Britain and the other by Luckiesh in the United States, leading to different recommended illuminances in the two countries. Because of the energy crisis of the 1970s, applied research into visual performance was undertaken to resolve the discrepancy, resulting in a model of relative visual performance. More recently, a controversy has emerged regarding the value of illuminating roadways. Recent research shows that the incremental improvements in visual performance provided by roadway lighting are correlated with the incremental reductions in night-time crashes, demonstrating that an understanding of visual performance remains important for lighting practice.

1. A little history When I began my career in lighting research in the 1970s, the energy crisis was the main topic of conversation at every level of society. In those circles where electric energy use in buildings was of central concern, recommended light levels became the main topic of debate. In the United States, a sharp ideological line was drawn between the lighting industry and the evolving set of government regulators. The lighting industry had been on a 50-year quest for higher and higher light levels that, until 1973, had gone unchallenged. Figure 1, from 1959, shows the past, then current, and the forecasted increases in recommended light levels until the 21st century.1 As energy became a central political topic, government became actively involved with electric energy use in buildings. The Federal Energy Agency, later the Department of Energy, was created in the United States
Address for correspondence: Mark S Rea, Lighting Research Center, 21 Union Street, Troy, NY 12180, USA E-mail: ream@rpi.edu The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers 2012

and began to take a much more aggressive role in questioning the industrys recommended light levels, with the implicit goal of reducing them to save electric energy in buildings. The lighting industry naturally took issue with this aggressive incursion into their domain. They believed they knew what was best for the public and, moreover, that many of these new governmental regulators were not only naive and misguided but perhaps rude as well.2 As the contentious discussions escalated, those on both sides of the ideological divide agreed that there should be a scientific basis for recommended light levels.35 Initially, the industry thought that by getting government regulators to agree to this foundation, they had effectively won the battle. The industry believed that the icon of the lighting industry, H Richard Blackwell, would dazzle everyone by laying out the scientific basis for recommended light levels, and government encroachment into the industrys domain would simply go away. Blackwell had been working on the relationship between visibility and recommended illuminance levels for a
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MS Rea on energy, lighting research laboratories around the world began to study the role that illumination levels had on visual performance,920 defined then and now as the speed and accuracy of processing visual information. Indeed, this emphasis on applied lighting research is the very reason I got into lighting with Dr Smith and why I worked for many years at the National Research Council Canada developing the model of relative visual performance (RVP).18,2123 Studies of visual performance preceded the energy crisis of the 1970s by several decades, however. Much of the seminal work on visual performance was started in the 1930s, both in Great Britain and in the United States. The approach taken in the United States by Matthew Luckiesh in the 1930s set the stage for the controversy over the recommended light levels in the United States 40 years later.
10,000 5000 2000 1000 500 200 100 50 1938 1943 Tens of fc were used in the past 1958 1978 Today, recommended levels for typical non-critical areas are about 100 fc In action areas hundreds of fc will be used for general lighting 1998

quarter century and had, in fact, developed a visibility model, published as Commission clairage (CIE) Report Internationale de lE No. 19, that had just received international approval.6 The report that described the model, they believed, came at a perfect time. It would now simply be a matter of conducting a few small empirical studies to validate Blackwells model (including those studies led by Dr Stanley W Smith at the Ohio State University, who supported me throughout graduate school) and, by extension, the industrys recommended light levels. In fact, both industry and government participants in the debate believed that with just a little more data, it would be possible to answer unambiguously how much light was needed in classrooms, offices, factories and homes, thereby optimizing our electric energy use in buildings.7,8 Given the heightened attention

Operating rooms (table) Show windows-daytime Cloth inspection Welding Interior display lighting Sewing in clothing industry Major league baseball Self service stores Service stores Industrial fine Medium Rough Office Drafting Difficult General 20 Storage fine Medium Rough 10 5 2 1 1898 1918

New IES recommended fc levels

History of illumination standards

Typical values

Figure 1 From 1959, the increases in Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) recommended levels of illumination in footcandles from the turn of the 20th century together with projected increases in the recommendations until the 21st century1

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The Trotter Paterson lecture 2012 Figure 2 is an image of Matthew Luckiesh at the height of his influence.24 (Coincidentally, Luckiesh was an adjunct instructor in illuminating engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, home of the Lighting Research Center.) By 1940, he had published at least 20 books on lighting and visibility and was the primary thought leader on the topic of lighting and visual performance in the United States at that time, although not without some controversy.25 Luckiesh argued that recommended light levels should be prescribed in terms of a visibility threshold. With his collaborator Frank Moss, he developed a visibility meter that reduced transmission of light to the eye to measure threshold visibility for realistic objects, such as printed type. When the visual task being seen through the visibility meter

Figure 2 American lighting and visibility pioneer Matthew Luckiesh24 in 1940

was at the breakpoint between seeing and not seeing, that is at threshold, the visibility level of that task could be determined relative to a standard target (8-point Bondi Book type viewed at 14 inches [35.5 cm] and presumably printed on white [  0.7] paper) at a reference illuminance level (10 footcandles [108 lx]). Through a set of empirical relationships between target contrast, target size, background luminance and estimated fixation time, the measured threshold visibility and the visibility threshold of the standard target at the reference illuminance level, Luckiesh argued that it was possible to scientifically prescribe an illuminance level for the visual task seen through the visibility meter. Figure 3 is a drawing of his visibility meter from his 1937 book with Moss.26 This intellectual framework developed by Luckiesh was later embraced by Blackwell in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, using his own set of empirical functions and his own version of a visibility meter.2729 It is surprising, and disappointing, that Luckiesh never received much credit for establishing the framework for linking studies of visual threshold to recommended light levels. It is perhaps true, however, that the link could not have been forged for formal recommendations without the force of Blackwells personality and that of Blackwells primary advocate, CL Cash Crouch, the Technical Director of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). If one reads the lighting literature from the late 1950s through the 1970s, it would be difficult to disagree that these two individuals (Figure 4) were the most important advocates for developing a scientific basis for recommended light levels in the United States. Indeed, they were key combatants on the battlefield of debate over energy and light levels throughout the 1970s.8,3136 In Great Britain during the 1930s, HC Weston took a very different approach than that employed by Luckiesh, and subsequently by Blackwell. Weston measured the speed and
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MS Rea Great Britain (e.g. 300 lx for general illumination),39 which in the 1960s were very much lower than those recommended in the United States (e.g. 1000 lx for general illumination).1 Because of the marked differences between the recommended light levels in the United States and in Great Britain, Westons studies became a target for Blackwell and Crouch. Ironically, Crouch used Westons data to devise a nomogram for scientifically based light-level recommendations in the mid1940s,40 but he later became a convert to the threshold approach espoused by Blackwell. Blackwell was one of the strongest critics of Westons approach.41 Figure 5 is from the CIE meeting in Brussels in 1958, showing Weston and Blackwell disagreeing on visual performance before that congress.42 In retrospect, Weston, Luckiesh and later Blackwell were much like the characters in the fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant.43 Each was carefully examining one aspect of the visual performance elephant; Luckiesh and Blackwell focused on determining the threshold for visibility which is very sensitive to small changes in light level. Then, by extrapolation to suprathreshold levels, recommendations for relatively high light levels in offices, schools and other commercial spaces could be justified.44,45 Weston, on the other hand, focused on measuring the speed and accuracy of processing visual targets well above threshold, which are very insensitive to small changes in light level, particularly for unrestricted viewing distances. Like the blind men of the fable, the two approaches are correct, but incomplete. Some tasks are of such high contrast and large size that they can be seen quite well under dim lighting; emergency lighting levels in offices are justifiably low for this reason.46,47 Other visual tasks require very high levels of illumination because they are very small or of low contrast; successfully threading a needle or removing a small wood splinter from the skin requires a high level of illumination.

Figure 3 The LuckieshMoss visibility meter.26 The user places the device (top illustration) on the bridge of the nose and looks through the two eye pieces. While viewing a test target (e.g. a manufacturing flaw), the user turns a knob on the top of the device (not shown) which is geared to a pair of circular, graded neutral density filters (bottom illustration), each located behind one eye piece. The user adjusts the transmission through the two filters until the test target appears to be just visible (or invisible), that is, at threshold. At threshold, the scale on the left is a measure of the visibility level of the test target relative to a standard target illuminated to 10 footcandles while viewed at a prescribed distance. The scale on the right is a measure of the illuminance (in footcandles) needed on the test target that would bring it to the same visibility as a standard target illuminated to 10 footcandles while viewed at a prescribed distance

accuracy with which human subjects could process a set of visual targets printed in different sizes and contrasts and seen under different illuminance levels.37,38 From those data, Weston developed a set of curves that demonstrated the insensitivity of visual performance to light level when objects were of large size and high contrast. In fact, Weston showed that visual performance for visual targets of the size and contrast of most printed reading tasks changed by only a few percentages with changes in illuminance level over several orders of magnitude. Westons studies set the stage for what ultimately translated into the recommended levels in
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The Trotter Paterson lecture 2012

Figure 4 H Richard Blackwell and CL (Cash) Crouch at the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) Southern California Section Study Club30 in 1959

Figure 5 HC Weston (left) and H Richard Blackwell (right) debating light-level recommendations at the Commission Internationale de lEclairage (CIE)42 Congress in Brussels, 1959

Around the time of the energy crisis of the 1970 s and shortly thereafter, a flurry of investigations of visual performance and light levels were made in Great Britain911,14,16,20 and the United States.12,13,15,1719,48 Reviewing all of these efforts49 and conducting further experiments21 at photopic and mesopic light levels to assess visual performance at near-threshold as well as suprathreshold conditions, Mike Ouellette and I developed the RVP model to provide a more complete and accurate perspective on the disparate approaches22,23 and, as it turned out, a basis for lowering recommended lighting levels in offices, schools and other commercial spaces in the United States. Today, in fact, the illuminance recommendations in Great Britain and in the United States are quite similar to one another (both are, for example, 300 lx for general illumination) and,
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MS Rea within the context of illuminating the interior of buildings. It is interesting to note that Kit Cuttle recently argued that visual performance is simply no longer important for architectural applications.52 Rather, according to Kit, we should focus our attention on the luminous exitance of surfaces within the architectural space because, he believes, luminous exitance is related to the most important design criterion, the perceived brightness of a space. Although I agree with the larger point that Kit has made, namely, that we should not be obsessed with horizontal illuminance levels to deliver visual performance in offices and schools, I do take issue with his contention that visual performance is no longer an important topic for lighting. Visual performance should still be an important design criterion in commercial settings for such tasks as sewing and lawyering, where seeing small details and reading fine print are necessities. Notwithstanding the importance of visual performance for these niche applications, I agree with Kit that visual performance should not be the basis for recommending light levels in most commercial applications. Other criteria like apparent brightness5355 and circadian regulation56 should begin to attract more formal consideration. Rather than completely abandon what we have learned about visual performance over the past 80 years, however, I believe visual performance should again be a central topic of discussion within the lighting community but we should now centre our attention on outdoor lighting because, through its effects on visual performance, it seems to directly affect traffic safety. 3. The model of RVP The model of RVP is graphically represented for one target size in Figure 6. In this figure, the relative speed of processing visual information by the fovea is plotted as a function of

interestingly, are much the same as those proposed in Great Britain in the 1960s. From a current comparison of these past and present recommended light levels, it would seem that Weston had been largely correct, although at the time, as Blackwell stated, Great Britain was the odd man out.50 2. Where are we now? National pride aside, it is abundantly clear that lighting communities around the world have simply moved on from an obsession with the relationship between visual performance and recommended light levels. In small part, this is because RVP provides a more complete understanding of the relationship between illumination levels and visual performance. More importantly, however, technology has largely moved us from our obsession. Although reading paper-based tasks is still quite common, many of the critical visual tasks we see are displayed on self-luminous screens. Screen treatments minimize reflected glare and easy-to-use software makes it trivial to change font type and size for comfortable reading. For much of what we read today, unlike what we read in the 1970s, recommended illumination levels for visual performance are functionally much less important. In addition, the significantly better and more energy-efficient lighting technologies developed for illuminating building interiors in the last 30 years have made us less concerned with recommended light levels. The efficacy of commercial lighting systems has increased by at least a factor of two since the 1960s.51 Higher lighting system efficacy, changes in visual task displays and the lower recommended illuminance levels for interior applications have combined to reduce the emphasis on developing a scientific basis for recommending illuminance levels. In sharp contrast to publications in the 1970s and 1980s, it would be very difficult to find a recent technical paper on visual performance
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The Trotter Paterson lecture 2012 target contrast and target background luminance (i.e. light level). This relationship is shown for just one target size in Figure 6, 15 microsteradians (msr). There are two important regions of visual performance illustrated in this figure, the plateau and the escarpment.58 On the white plateau, large changes in background luminance, target contrast and target size have little effect on the speed and accuracy of processing visual information. This is what Weston had shown in the 1930s and 1940s. On the dark grey escarpment, however, small changes in any of these parameters can make the difference between seeing and not seeing the object. This is what Luckiesh had shown in the 1930s and 1940s, and what Blackwell stressed in the 1950s and 1960s. The RVP model was originally developed from experiments measuring the speed and accuracy of comparing lists of five-digit numbers under different light levels and lighting geometries.18,21 Subsequent studies using reaction times to targets of different

sizes and contrasts viewed at different background luminance levels were conducted to validate and extend the RVP model.22,59 More recent studies of visual performance have also been conducted in various applications,6064 reinforcing the validity of the RVP model, which now seems to be a complete and detailed representation of the visual performance elephant that obsessed the lighting community in the 1970s and 1980s. As already noted, most visual tasks that we illuminate in commercial spaces have sufficiently high contrast and are of sufficiently large size that visual performance is almost always on the RVP plateau.65 Thus, changing illumination levels for these applications has little, if any, effect on visual performance. Figure 7 is a plan view of the RVP surface for targets subtending a solid angle of 4.8 msr at the eyes, a size comparable to 10-point printed type seen at 50 cm. The contour plot shows constant levels of visual performance as a function of light level and contrast. The un-shaded portion of Figure 7 shows the range of light levels and contrasts typical in commercial offices (the shaded portions are unlikely to be found in these spaces). Visual

1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 RVP

1 0.8 Contrast 0.6 0.4 0.2

0.9 10.0
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0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 1.0

m2 )

0.8

nc

0.1 0.2

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Figure 6 Relationship among background luminance, target contrast and relative visual performance (RVP) for a target having a solid angular size of 15 microsteradians (msr). This size corresponds to that of the standard small target (20 cm 20 cm) used by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America in the specification of visibility levels for roadway lighting viewed from 46 m57

Lu

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in a

0.6 0.5 0.4 Contr 0.3 ast

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Figure 7 Contours of constant relative visual performance (RVP) values as a function of light level and contrast. The unshaded area in the upper-right portion of the figure corresponds to the light-level range (450 cd/ m2, which corresponds to white paper under illuminances of at least 200 lx) and luminance contrast range (40.7, based on field measurements by Dillon et al.)65 of typical office lighting applications. The size of the visual stimulus, 4.8 sr, corresponds to the typical size of 10point type viewed from 50 cm. An age of 20 years is assumed for the purpose of RVP calculations

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MS Rea roadway are on the escarpment of the visual performance surface or worse (i.e. hazards are below threshold). Unlike interior commercial applications, visual performance is quite sensitive to lighting and contrast parameters for outdoor, night-time applications like roadways, particularly for older drivers (Figure 8(b)). Thus, while it is largely true that no one dies from bad lighting in the office, bad lighting on the roadway can easily be lethal.70 Luckiesh and Blackwell were largely correct then for these applications where visual performance really matters. Recently, the Lighting Research Center has been utilizing the RVP model to design and evaluate lighting systems for roadway

performance is insensitive to either factor (RVP40.9) under these conditions, so differences in illuminance levels for most printed text have little effect on the speed and accuracy of reading. In actual applications, it is also important to note that people will usually compensate for losses in visibility due to low light levels outside the range illustrated in Figure 7 by changing their behaviour. Young people with normal vision will bring the task closer to the eyes to increase visual target size66 and those of us over 45 years of age (presbyopes) don our corrective lenses to bring the task into focus. Furthermore, people will often bring additional illumination to the task if it is hard to see, by either utilizing daylight or adjustable task lights.67 All of these behaviours are implicitly performed to keep the visual task away from the escarpment, and on the plateau of visual performance. Clearly, an obsession with visual performance in commercial spaces is misplaced and, as Kit suggests, we should change our focus for these applications. 4. Roadway lighting

1 0.8 Contrast 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.1

RVP 0.9 > 0.7 RVP < 0.9 > 0.0 RVP 0.7 RVP 0.0

Luminance (cd/m2)

Compensatory behavioural strategies to stay on the visual performance plateau are often not available to us when we drive (e.g. using high-beam headlights all the time we drive). When we experience a loss of visibility on the road, we slow down (or, at least, we should slow down!) to provide us with enough time to respond to objects that might be hazards.68 Thus, understanding the relationship between roadway lighting and visual performance is still quite important. Figure 8 illustrates the influence of light level and contrast on visual performance under conditions typical for roadway applications. The un-shaded portions of this paired figure (Figure 8(a) and (b)) show the range of light levels and contrasts common for roadways at night. Many times, in fact, objects on or near the
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0.8 Contrast 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.1

RVP 0.9 > 0.7 RVP < 0.9 > 0.0 RVP 0.7 RVP 0.0

Luminance (cd/m2)

Figure 8 Contours of constant relative visual performance (RVP) values as a function of light level and contrast for young (8a, top) and older (8b, bottom) drivers. The unshaded area in the lower portions of both figures correspond to the light-level range (0.1 cd/m21 cd/m2, which corresponds to asphalt under illuminances of 3 lx 30 lx) and luminance contrast range (50.7 based on analyses by Bullough et al.69) typical of night-time driving conditions. The size of the visual stimulus, 15 sr, corresponds to that of the standard small target (20 cm 20 cm) used by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America in the specification of visibility levels for roadway lighting, viewed from 46 m away57

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The Trotter Paterson lecture 2012 applications. Crosswalk lighting is one such application (Figure 9).64,69 Fortunately, pedestrian deaths from vehicles are few, but they are almost always associated with poor visibility. After striking a pedestrian with an automobile, drivers often say, I never saw the person. Encouraging pedestrians to use crosswalks is important, but people are still often struck by cars in or near the crosswalk.71 In fact, using the RVP model to assess the visibility provided by many crosswalk lighting systems, we have found that the most common type of crosswalk lighting system used in North America provides rather poor visibility of pedestrians,69 even though it provides relatively high levels of illumination. The contrast of the pedestrian against the roadway background is often low for an oncoming driver of a car with headlamps because of the combined spatial distributions of illumination provided by the headlamps and by the fixed luminaire near the crosswalk. The RVP model provides important insight into the interactions between target size, target contrast and background luminance as they are affected by headlights and fixed, roadway illumination systems. More generally, we have been using the RVP model to determine whether fixed

1.0 R2 =0.78 0.8 RVP 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 1.0 Adult Child 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 Mean identification time (s) 4.0 4.5

Figure 9 The relationship between relative visual performance (RVP) and mean identification time of life-size targets, black silhouettes of an adult and of a child, under different types of cross-walk illumination (adapted from Bullough et al.64)

roadway lighting systems contribute to safe driving.72 Communities in both Great Britain and the United States are sharply divided as to the perceived benefits of roadway lighting; some say they are a waste of energy and money, and some say they are essential for safety. Lighting experts have claimed a benefit of 30% reduction in nighttime traffic (car-to-car) collisions,73 while others claim there is no evidence for any safety benefits.74 Together with my colleagues, John Bullough at the Lighting Research Center and Eric Donnell at Pennsylvania State University, we have been able to examine the statistical relationship between the presence of street lights (and headlights) and night-time vehicle collisions in the state of Minnesota,75,76 together with the visual performance benefits provided by roadway intersection lighting systems in Minnesota. Minnesota is an unusual state because it not only keeps intersectionspecific collision data, but it also has a formal, documented procedure for illuminating those intersections. What we were able to do, we believe for the very first time, is link the visual performance benefits delivered by the lighting systems in Minnesota to the statistical crash data in Minnesota. The RVP model23 was an essential link in that chain of logic. We were able to create a virtual, photometrically accurate intersection with and without roadway lighting (automobile headlights were always on) to assess the speed and accuracy with which a virtual driver could determine with the fovea figureground relationships between an oncoming car and the roadway.72 There is no question that the headlights are highly visible, but we hypothesized that the figure-ground information about the speed and direction of the oncoming car is less readily available to the driver without roadway illumination. A comparison of statistical likelihoods of vehicle-to-vehicle crashes at roadway intersections in Minnesota, with and without
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MS Rea out, traffic volumes play a major role in the value of a roadway lighting system, where value is defined as the safety benefits of roadway illumination divided by the fixed and operational costs to provide that illumination. For busy urban roadways, roadway lighting almost always provides a high value (i.e. the benefit/cost ratio is high) even if the improvements in visual performance are small. In other words, a small benefit to a lot of drivers can be highly valuable. Conversely, for rarely used, rural intersections the value of lighting is much smaller. This is because there are so few people at the intersection that the benefits of illumination go unrealized. I want to strongly emphasize again that many more reinforcing and converging studies need to be conducted before the Lighting Research Center would recommend our results from Minnesota as the universal basis for roadway lighting policy around the world. Needed is converging evidence from field demonstrations, laboratory studies, additional statistical analyses of safety and lighting from more states and countries, and, perhaps most importantly, long-term, longitudinal studies of the safety benefits of roadway lighting. Further, tests of the RVP model should also be conducted because it is one of the critical links in the logical chain connecting roadway lighting and traffic safety. Although I believe that the RVP model23 has been validated as a method for assessing the visual benefits of roadway lighting, so did Weston, Luckiesh and Blackwell believe their views of visual performance were valid. Karl Popper said, in effect, that the only useful models in science were those that were falsifiable by hypothesis testing.77 From this perspective then, the predictive nature of the RVP model must be (and is) entirely open to falsification, if it is to have lasting significance for deciding whether roadways should be illuminated or not.

roadway lighting, to the visual performance potential at these intersections, with and without roadway lighting, produces a transfer function relating the incremental statistical reduction in crashes to the incremental increase in visual performance. Figure 10 shows the transfer function relating the incremental increase in RVP scores due to roadway lighting in Minnesota to the incremental statistical reduction in traffic crashes at night in Minnesota.75 Although much more reinforcing experimental data need to be gathered, it seems that the roadway lighting practices in Minnesota provide, on average, about a 10% reduction in traffic crashes. This sounds like a small number, but in fact, it provides a quantitative foundation for deciding where and when roadway lighting should be provided, as well as where and when it should not be provided. Taking into account the costs of poles, luminaires, energy and maintenance together with the benefits of avoiding property damage, injury and death, the value of a lighting system can be determined for any type of intersection. As it turns

15% Nighttime crash reduction

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y=0.072x R2 =0.93

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0% 0 1.5 0.5 1 Visual performance improvement (RVP score units) 2

Figure 10 Transfer function relating the calculated incremental improvements in relative visual performance (RVP) scores due to roadway illumination in Minnesota to the estimated night-time car-to-car crash reductions due to roadway intersection illumination in Minnesota.75 RVP score values were used for the analysis whereby: RVP  0.9 3, 0.8  RVP50.9 2, 0.7  RVP50.8 1, RVP50.7 0

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The Trotter Paterson lecture 2012 5. Conclusions I believe that long after the individuals on the intellectual battlefield retire, the precipitate of the struggle should be our collective, scientific understanding of natural phenomena. In this belief, there are two underlying points for contemporary consideration. First, the problems we will tackle as researchers will be chosen from within a social context, not, as many suppose, in pursuit of pure science. Second, our understanding of natural phenomena may progress through hypothesis testing or that understanding may simply be lost through neglect or ignorance. Ideally, as the social context changes, the previous scientific discoveries inform the individuals on the next intellectual battlefield and our collective understanding of natural phenomena gets broader and deeper. But, scientific progress appears to be a matter of culture. Those cultures that accept dogma make no progress at all, and those that do not have an appreciation or understanding of the history of the science will not benefit from it. The central battle of the 1970s over energy and recommended light levels has been resolved, in some part because of the research on visual performance begun in the 1930s in Great Britain and in the United States that eventually culminated in the model of RVP.23 Whether RVP serves society in the 21st century as a means for quantifying how roadway lighting can affect traffic safety will depend largely upon whether contemporary researchers know the history of visual performance research in the 20th century. This assumes, of course, that society actually cares how roadway lighting affects traffic safety and wants to do something meaningful about it. Acknowledgements I would like to extend sincere thanks to my colleagues at the Lighting Research Center

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for their assistance in preparing this manuscript: John Bullough, PhD; Mariana Figueiro, PhD; Dennis Guyon and Ines Martinovic.

References
1 Committee on Progress. Reaching for the sun. Illuminating Engineering 1959; 54: 19. 2 Coda FM. Energy notes: Letter to JC Sawhill, with response. Lighting Design and Application 1974; 4: 6062. 3 Amick CL. Energyand our role as illuminating engineers. Lighting Design and Application 1974; 4: 3233. 4 Illuminating Engineering Society. Energy advisory committee report. Lighting Design and Application 1974; 4: 1012. 5 Ross DK. Task lighting: Yet another view. Lighting Design and Application 1978; 8: 3743. clairage. A 6 Commission Internationale de lE Unified Framework of Methods for Evaluating Visual Performance Aspects of Lighting, CIE19. Paris: CIE, 1972. 7 Federal Energy Administration. Proceedings of the Basis for Effective Management of Lighting and Energy Symposium. Washington, DC: Federal Energy Administration, 1972. 8 Crouch CL. Can we scientifically bridge the gap between the architect and the illuminating engineer? Lighting Design and Application 1972; 2: 3843. 9 Rowlands E, Loe DL, Waters IM, Hopkinson RG. Visual performance in illuminance of different spectral quality: 16th Session of the clairage. Commission Internationale de lE Barcelona, Spain. Paris: Commission clairage, 1971. Internationale de lE 10 Boyce PR. Age, illuminance, visual performance and preference. Lighting Research and Technology 1973; 5: 125145. 11 Loe DL, Waters IM. Visual Performance in Illumination of Differing Spectral Quality. London: Environmental Research Group, University College London, 1973. 12 McNelis JF. Human performance: A pilot study. Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society 1973; 2: 190196.
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