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Well, many transport authorities don't care and would rather save money on electricity costs and materials (less LEDs and less powerful drivers) than actually m

• jacobolus 10y ago
  They would save even more money on electricity by just cutting the brightness of the lamps. Whatever official body or industry recommendation sets the standards for urban illumination really needs to bring things down. My street’s new LED lamps could have their intensity chopped by 2/3 without adversely affecting anyone’s vision.
  • closeparen 10y ago
    The electorate believes that brighter street lighting leads to less crime, and dimmer street lighting leads to more crime. A municipal politician's career would be eviscerated by the first violent crime on a street they voted to dim. "Soft on light pollution" doesn't kill political careers.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      Well, they might even be right. See, if the electorate believes it then likely so do the muggers (them being part of the electorate). And so the muggers will seek out the streets with the dimmer light. Even if the science is lousy it might actually work out that way if there are streets with and streets without dimmed lights. So the only way to control for this is to have the whole city dim the lights on some nights and not on others to compare when there was the most criminal activity.
      • Zak 10y ago
        Another way to control for it is to increase or decrease lighting in some locations while leaving others the same and see what changes occur to crime rates. That has been done at least once, in Chicago where low-output lights were replaced with much brighter lights in some alleys but not others, with controls for various demographic factors and prior crime rates. The result was that crime increased where brighter lighting was used. One plausible explanation is that committing crimes, like most human activities is easier when there's sufficient light to see what you're doing, and using a flashlight is a poor option when you want to avoid calling attention to your illegal behavior. http://www.popcenter.org/library/scp/pdf/130-Morrow_Hutton.pdf http://www.popcenter.org/library/scp/pdf/130-Morrow_Hutton.p...
        • Infernal 10y ago
          This makes me wonder - did the brighter light cause more crime to be committed, or did it cause more crime to be detected? A criminal must be caught for his crime to be recorded, after all.
          • Zak 10y ago
            That's only true for victimless crimes, and the bulk of the increase in non-index crimes in the study was drug-related. The study mentions increased reporting due to visibility as an explanation. The index crimes increased as well. Those include homicide, assault, burglary and theft, all of which have victims.
    • vosper 10y ago
      I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted (lack of a citation?) but I think you're right. To the extent that most people think about this at all I bet they would say they prefer bright street lights to dimmer ones in their neighborhood.