This paper addresses the relationships between visibility from a vehicle and probability of accident involvement. It defines and discusses direct and indirect visibility in terms of both quantity (extent of the field of view available to the driver), and quality (extent to which the available field of view is degraded by adverse weather or other factors).
Relevant vehicle, driver, and environmental characteristics are identified, and their frequency of occurrence and relationship to accidents (or pertinent proxies) discussed whenever such information is available. The bulk of the report is devoted to reviewing, summarizing, and integrating the large body of data concerning visibility, including engineering analyses and other analytical studies, as well as experimental data from laboratory, simulation and field studies.
The major output of this review and summary is the identification of: 1) the major problems associated with vehicle visibility systems, 2) mitigating concepts, including a discussion of how these concepts should be evaluated, and 3) considerations for future attention by safety research community dedicated to improving vehicle visibility systems.
