Strategy to Facilitate the Integration of Dynamic Lightinginto EN 13201 and Related Regulations
13.02.2018, Axel Stockmar
Regarding the structure of the European Commission for Standardization the most important Technical Body in the field of road lighting is the Technical Committee CEN/TC 169 ‘Light and lighting’, and within the CEN/TC 169 the Working Group 12 entitled ‘CEN/TC 169/226 Joint Working group road lighting’. The different parts of the documents dealing with road lighting are elaborated by a small number of experts of respective task groups, and are presented to all members of the working group for discussion, circulation, preparation of draft standards for enquiries, and at a later stage for final voting.
The Technical Report CEN/TR 13201-1 “Road lighting - Part 1: Guidelines on selection of lighting classes” has been prepared by some few experts of Task Group 1 of Working Group 12. This Technical Report is obviously not written in a style which would allow national standardization organizations to implement it as a national standard. For that reason, a number of national standardization organizations (also of countries not participating in the INTERREG project) have developed national standards, usually numbered differently.
Although identical or very similar parameters are considered on national level for the selection of an appropriate lighting class as well as for the application of adaptive / dynamic lighting, the resulting classes could differ considerably for a given road traffic situation. This depends mainly on the manner of categorizing road situations and on the handling of fixed and/or time-dependent parameters.
As a first step the selection procedures should be re-considered by experts within the responsible National Standardization Bodies, based on local/regional/national conditions and experiences. National opinions should be made available for discussion in CEN/TC 169 Working Group 12, wherever possible by active participation in the meetings of national delegates. During the preparation of the next revised Technical Report CEN/TR 13201-1 by the respective Task Group 1 of Working Group 12 (second step) delegated (by as many as interested National Standardization Bodies) experts should play an active role in the formulation of a harmonized selection procedure of lighting classes. It should be possible to come to a consensus of opinion regarding road categories and fixed or time dependent parameters to be considered for a particular road situation. Where limiting values linked to selectable options, e.g. for design speed, differ from regulation to regulation forced by national legislation, examples could be worked out (as blue-prints) which could be added to a European standard in form of an informative annex.
