Currently, most of our highways are not equipped with street lights. With the introduction of LED highway lighting technology, experts expected a fast development of LED in this area. However, there are also some other people suspected that LED highway lighting industry was going too fast and worried about a deformed and unhealthy development at last.
Mr. Junyan Xie, an expert from the street lighting field, indicated that: “LED highway lighting applications are far beyond where it expected and should be. I discussed with other experts and scientists in this part, we listed many advantages of LED highway products, but there still some disadvantages. In my opinion, before solving these problems, we should not promote such immature technology in the highway applications. This will increase the risk of accidents. ” Mr. Xiaoping Yang, a scientist from Beijing Institute of Electric Lighting Source suggested that it is infeasible for replacing all existing high pressure sodium lamps with LED lighting products. We should start with small roads and main roads. Highways will be the final step. After a certain period of development, when the quality and reliability of LED highway lamps can be ensured, it will be the time that LED lighting technology dominates the highway market. Mr. Yangsheng Chen, the chairman of China Association of Lighting implied that LED highway lamps may probably be pilot applied. It is not a right time to widely promote them due to the bottlenecks in technology and cost aspects.
Highways have their special driving requirements, especially in raining/snowing days. As we all known, high pressure sodium lamps have very high penetration, much better than White-ray LED lights. How can LED lighting applications competent in fog weather? Mr. Junyan Xie disagreed with the using of LED highway lighting applications. In his point of view, with current LED technology, LED lights will “totally be failed” in fog days. “That’s really dangerous for drivers.”
In the conditions of low-carbon applications having been supported in many countries and areas, safety is the most important factor in highway or other road facilities. Extreme weather conditions should not be omitted in the consideration of LED-related lighting applications. No matter how, it is the safety that most important than other factors.