The invention discloses an image-brightness-characteristic-based pan / tilt / zoom (PTZ) video visibility detection method, which comprises the following steps of: acquiring a road condition video image by using a PTZ video camera, extracting a region of interest (ROI) of the road surface, and acquiring high consistency of the selected pixels; obtaining an accurate road surface region by utilizing a Nagao-filtering-based regional growth algorithm, and ensuring consistent illumination of the selected pixels in a world coordinate; in the road surface region, extracting a contrast curve reflecting the road surface brightness change, searching brightness curve characteristic points, and calculating the farthest pixel which can be identified by human eyes in the image through an extinction coefficient; and combining the camera to calibrate and convert the maximum visual range, and determining a visibility value. In the method, artificial markers are not needed to be set, the existing PTZ camera is fully utilized to shoot road condition and acquire images, can monitor the road condition in real time, and is low in monitoring cost; moreover, the requirement on large-area road condition monitoring is met, the monitoring is stable and is not interfered by external environment, and the visibility monitoring method is easy to implement, high in accuracy and good in effect.