4 ms·

This is cool, however there is an implicit assertion here that better lit = safer. As far as I can tell this is questionable at best, a decent roundup of studie

• karussell 6y ago
  Thanks a lot for pointing this out. Probably it is also about perceived safety :)
• aaron695 6y ago
  Isaac Asimov did an interesting short article on the full moon and increased crime. He concludes crime goes up because we have a connection to the full moon rather than the extra lighting. His article was written decades ago. I suspect today he'd change that idea given the better data available. Personally I think adding lighting to cities makes personal safety far better. I get what the studies are doing but I think they are relying on novelty to get published over boring. But certainly you have to watch putting someone down a well-lit underpass over crossing a not so well-lit busy road. I think the value to the data is for councils to find where lighting should be improved. Plus there's also more to safety than just crime.
• adamjb 6y ago
  All the studies mentioned seem to focus on total crimes and not crimes per trip. I wonder if the (lack of) effect they observe is because of increased lighting leading to increased trips which leads to more crimes just because there are more people, cancelling out or negating any increased safety per trip.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    More likely that more trips means more lighting. Municipalities don't tend to spend the bucks lighting places with low traffic.