8 ms·
The funny thing is, in my neck of Seattle (the city this post is complaining about), I've seen some of the harsh white LEDs that went in switched over to a warm
by a_e_k 2y ago
The funny thing is, in my neck of Seattle (the city this post is complaining about), I've seen some of the harsh white LEDs that went in switched over to a warmer color. I remember being quite shocked when I pulled into a city-owned parking lot one night and realized that all of the lights around were all now a warmer color instead of the harsh white. The lights in my neighborhood also seem to have been switched over at some point. I suppose they're the tunable LEDs, but clearly someone here does care.
- lloeki 2y agoIn my city they started turning off all streetlights at midnight outside of major driving lanes and active center areas. It's weird and somewhat unnerving at first but brilliant. I'd argue road-wise it is possibly even safer because headlights work so much better when it's pitch black by virtue of the human eye having so much dynamic range. Pedestrians can't miss cars as they're blasting light through the dark; cars can't miss bikes because even passive reflectors are blaring in the surrounding darkness; even pedestrians end up being more visible because of the higher contrast, cast shadows, and movement that conspire to make them plainly pop out like cardboard props or Doom 3 flashlight jumpscares. And when you go out of the dark zone into a major axis that's bathed in light that feels warm and safe it's like everything is suddenly muted and flattened as if reality went through a low contrast sepia-tinted desaturation filter. You feel like you see better but everything is muddled together in the sameness of uniform lighting. The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and counterintuitive.
- jaimebuelta 2y agoWTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full darkness? This seems to be totally oriented to cars. I find American cities incredibly dark by night. Walking around feels too dark and unpleasant.
- quietbritishjim 2y agoI'm don't see why this is downvoted, I think it's an honest and legitimate question. What are pedestrians supposed to do when there's no car passing them right this moment? Carry their own torch? Rely on ambient light from the moon and reflected from nearby lit streets? Are we assuming there's such a high volume of cars that there's never a gap? I'm genuinely confused.
- tass 2y agoWhere I live, even with streetlights, most people I see walking after dark carry a torch. It’s easier than ever to carry one.
- quietbritishjim 2y agoHonest question: Do you mean that most pedestrians are actually using (not just carrying on their person) a torch while walking along lit streets? I have essentially never seen that where I live, except some joggers have lights attached to their clothing but that's just so others can see them better. I can't imagine street lighting in an urban/suburban area being so bad that that would be necessary. That's a terrible state of affairs which, in itself, is a gross anti-pedestrian move. (Or did you just factiously mean that people have smart phones on them which can function as torches?)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- GJim 2y agoClearly you have lived your entire life in a city under streetlights. Here, if you go the the pub at night as the streetlights are turned off at midnight, so you take a torch (your phone as a backup). Its perfectly commonplace. To suggest this is "anti-pedestrian" is a bit silly. Rather, it's anti-light pollution.
- cowfriend 2y ago> except some joggers have lights attached to their clothing but that's just so others can see them better. Yes, generally the purpose of the light is so others can see you. My god, we spend all of our lives blasting lights into our eyes (some people call these lights "screens"), we've forgotten how to live without it!
- diggan 2y ago> WTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full darkness? During a normal night, you get used to the darkness surprisingly fast, and if there even a slight sliver of moonlight, your eyes will within seconds adjust and let you see things again without trouble. At least that's my experience growing up in the dark countryside in Sweden and seemingly retaining this as an adult, YMMV.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y agoYMMV as you get older and lose that superpower.
- diggan 2y agoWhat range/years are you specifically referring to? It seemingly is as good as ever, and I'm 32 now. I'm guessing that would start being around 40s, when the general eye-sight starts to decline?
- meiraleal 2y agoI don't think there is a rule for that? At least not in my case. My eyesight got worse really fast out-of-nowhere when I was like, 15 years old? And since then it didn't change anymore. I got myopia, after a few years of too much computer screen (the old CRTs).
- suddenlybananas 2y agoAlso it's terrifying for safety; way too easy to assault someone in complete darkness.
- GJim 2y agoCompletely the opposite. Numerous studies show crime goes down when streetlights are turned off. Simply put, you don't get scrotes hanging about in groups up to no good without lights, and anybody who is walking around is carrying a torch, making it obvious what they are doing (e.g. if you are breaking into a house, needing a torch instead of using a streetlight makes it obvious to everybody what you are doing). No to mention a lack of streetlights makes if harder for somebody to hide in the shadows. The real question to ask, is why people like yourself are 'terrified' [sic] of the dark. Statistics show the real truth of what you should be worried about.
- Vampiero 2y ago> The real question to ask, is why people like yourself are 'terrified' [sic] of the dark. Statistics show that people don't care about statistics but about confirmation bias and the media is eager to feed it.
- cowfriend 2y agoI suspect your terror comes from lack of familiarity with natural light outdoors, and is a product of always having the lights on plus not being out of a house often. The night is not 'complete darkness', we can generally see fairly well. Also, I suspect your presumption on assault risk and assault rates comes from media, which is designed around building fear. Fear sells. So I agree that you find the natural world terrifying, I just wish you didn't. Because the natural world is what we are fit for.
- Vampiero 2y ago> Because the natural world is what we are fit for. Good thing we live in cities then!
- 2y ago
- olyjohn 2y agoGet a flashlight?
- nonameiguess 2y agoI'm a regular outdoor runner and also an extreme morning person, so I'm often out running at like 3 AM, and it is absolutely not safer to be in complete darkness. Surfaces are not perfectly uniform and unobstructed and the ambient light from the atmosphere and surrounding city, even dead in the center of a major metro area, is nowhere near enough to see everything you might hit. I've tripped many times and even broken my hand before. It is effectively impossible to ever go full speed.
- arccy 2y agoif you're out running at night, perhaps you should also be carrying some lights? both to help you see your environment and to help others see you.
- mcswell 2y agoI run at night on trails (during the summer, when it's too hot to run during the day). I wear a headlamp, and don't trip any more than I do in the day--despite the fact that the trails have rocks and roots. The only issue I have is that because the headlamp is inches from my eyes, shadows are almost invisible.
- csomar 2y ago> The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and counterintuitive. Hitting the next homeless person and throwing them 10 meter in the space will be quite the experience. Honestly, this is not shitty experience because of regulation, this is just councils cutting costs everywhere except their salaries. Los Angeles these last couple days has showed what it means to do that. You'll literally be on fire some day.
- rbetts 2y agoI'm glad that darkness is respected in some places. The need to live in constant light is, to me, unnerving. Light pollution, like noise pollution, creates a myopic dome of sensory oblivion, separating us from experiencing the sounds of nature, the splendor the night sky, the emotions of isolation. I think we'd be better off with a nightly reminder of the natural world and expansive universe beyond our city block.
- marcosdumay 2y agoPeople are afraid of the darkness. I really wish that wasn't the case. But removing lights is an uphill battle powered by irrational arguments and doomed to failure even on the cases where it's clearly the best option. Even dimming the lights is hard.
- 1auralynn 2y agoI've grudgingly come to admit that also people who don't have great vision love bright lighting. I can usually see perfectly well by starlight, but that's not the case for everyone.
- mcswell 2y agoI was once in the US Navy, and stood many a bridge watch. When it got dark, all outside lights except for the navigation lights (red light on port bow, green on starboard bow, a white light up top and another white light on the stern). And on the bridge, we used only dim red lights, to avoid affecting our night vision. None of the navigation lights was easily visible from the bridge. And you could see reasonably well, even on a cloudy night.
- bagels 2y agoI walk a lot and support this, even though I am not convinced it makes me more visible when not in front of the headlights. Typically, the danger happens when walking on the sidewalk perpendicular to a road. I can see the car, they cannot see me until I'm a few feet in to the crosswalk when I'm not lit up by a street light.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoWhere I come from they did change the lights to LEDs, but they turn off 2/3rds or 3/4ths of them after midnight; still enough light to navigate, but much less power usage and light pollution. There's a bike lane outside of town whose lights were motion activated, iirc that was installed about 20 years ago.