ABSTRACT
Paved roads have existed in Europe since Roman times and in South America since the time of the Inca empire, but road lighting is much more recent. Lighting designed specifically for enhancing the safety of the driver began to appear in the 1930s. Three factors converged to make road lighting possible and desirable at this time. The first was the availability of the necessary technologies in the form of an extensive electricity distribution network together with suitable lamps and luminaires. The second was the establishment of official systems for regulating the design and use of vehicles and the control of traffic. The third was the growth in the number of vehicles on the roads and the speeds those vehicles could sustain. Despite this convergence, the growth in road lighting was slow. Indeed, the autobahn system in Germany, introduced in the 1930s, and the motorway systems in Belgium and Britain, introduced in the 1950s, all designed for high-speed traffic, were opened without lighting. However, as traffic densities and traffic speeds have continued to increase, road lighting has become more extensive until it is now routinely considered as an important component of any road scheme.
