To enhance driving safety, a counter beam light is proposed to meet CIE (International Commission on Illumination) specifications for tunnel lighting. The proposed new counter beam light (CBL) acts as a qualified counter beam light to help tunnel road lighting meet the CIE 88 : 2004 regulation standard in the threshold zone in both simulation and in practice. Through appropriate arrangements of the counter beam light and conventional fluorescent lights on the tunnel ceiling, we demonstrate that road tunnel lighting meeting CIE 88 : 2004 standards can be accomplished. Based on LiteStar four-dimensional simulation, the source file created through the measurement of the proposed CBL prototype achieved an average road surface brightness of 121 cd/m2, which is greater than the minimum regulation level of 105 cd/m2, a brightness uniformity of 0.88 (minimum regulation level of 0.4), longitudinal brightness uniformity of 0.98 (minimum regulation level of 0.6), a glare factor of 4.41% (maximum level of 15%), and a contrast revealing coefficient of 1.08, which is above the 0.6 minimum level in the threshold zone.

An LED Counter Beam Light (CBL) with a free surface secondary lens is proposed to enhance the safety and efficiency of tunnels. The secondary lens was designed and produced to be mounted on a 50 W white-light LED array to generate the targeted counter beam pattern, in order to meet the standards for enhanced tunnel road lighting of the CIE (Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage)—CIE 88:2004—in a trial tunnel lighting scheme. Through the simulation of a road tunnel in Northern Taiwan using the LiteStar four-dimensional software, it was shown that the proposed LED light can serve as a qualifying CBL to generate an average road tunnel surface luminance (Lav) of 182.76 cd/m2, which is better than the 138 cd/m2 that commercial High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) tunnel lights can provide and the 181 cd/m2 minimum stipulated in the CIE 88:2004 regulations. The results also show that the proposed LED light accomplishes a contrast revealing coefficient qc of 1.03, which is above the minimum regulatory level of 0.6 for a qualified CBL, as well as a luminance uniformity Uo of 0.89 (regulatory minimum, 0.4), longitudinal luminance uniformity UL of 0.99 (regulatory minimum, 0.6), and glare factor TI (threshold increment) of 7.24% (regulatory minimum, 15%). In order to test the feasibility of the LED CBL for future commercialization, the proposed LED CBL was prototyped and measured; the results demonstrate that an average road surface luminance (Lav) of 184.5 cd/m2, intensity of the luminance uniformity Uo of 0.7, intensity of the longitudinal luminance uniformity UL of 0.94, glare factor of 7.04%, and contrast revealing coefficient qc of 1.38 can be achieved, which are all above the levels required by the CIE 88:2004 regulations.