Up to 75% of councils are dimming the lights to save money
Depends how they do it. They could just replace the bulbs with lower power ones, for instance, or remove a couple of bulbs from multi-bulb fittings. Or turn off half the lights in a street.
Then use the savings to pay the extra hospital costs due to the increase in road accidents. Householders will also notice an increase in insurance premiums in unlit areas to pay for the increase in burglaries.....
Inserts tongue in cheek> Then again, the story *is* in the Daily Mail.
Only dimming? Round here whole swathes of them have been "unplugged", some have even had their heads removed and most of the rest go off after
00:15 (or rather after 01:15 now the clocks have changed) leaving one light per street in residential areas.
Perhaps they could send out heavily subsidised LED torches, one per household, so that local residents can venture out in safety...
What are street lights? Oh those 'orrible orange things that screw up the night sky in towns and cities...
Vulnerable people don't venture out anyway, even with the street lights on.
Just fit a PIR flood at the front if you think its a problem, the the police helicopter can watch the people go down the road by following the flood lights.
I wish they would turn the street lights off around here save me having to use a filter on the scope.
They've been considering that round here. It's already pretty black at night (village). Certainly seems to be a retrograde step WRT accidents and crime...
I think its actually good for crime.
First of all, in terms of straight mugging, a victim can hide in the dark.
Having played hide and seek in the dark as a child, one of the most successful ploys was to lie down in the middle of the garden. They always looked in bushes
likewise you then need to carry a torch as a crim on B&E jobs. This makes you a bit obvious. .
AS far as accidents go, all vehicles have lights - except cyclists of course. You can see a light in a pitch black place easily.
If you are a cyclist with no lights, you deserve what you get anyway.
I was actually going to report a few hundred yard stretch of lights as faulty when I first noticed they were all off for several evenings, it was then that I realised that burying a small article on the council website a couple of months prior to switching them off counts as "consultation".
Cars should be more easily visible. Only pedestrians that wear camouflage clothing will, probably, be more difficult to see. Cars would also travel more slowly as nobody drives beyond the limits of visibility (do they!).
Urban areas have more crime now and they have street lighting, maybe its the fact the crims can see that causes the extra crime. If they had to carry torches to see and houses had PIR lights that came on when people were about crime would go down? Its a lot easier to see someone climbing over fences if they need a torch than it is when they can put on camouflage clothing and see what they are doing without a torch.
twas ever thus.
Yes. Fortunately we don't have them here or in our last village.
Even though this story is in the Daily Mail it really is being proposed in some districts near me.
Of course the council won't have to bear the costs of increased road collisions and crime so they would probably save a little bit of money.
Agh Ha, the Vogon style of consultation, works every time. You really should have read all the planning notices, they were there for you if you had bothered to look.
:-)
In message , Tim Streater writes
Our local council had a public consultation, complete with postal vote over whether or not they should be fitted in our village, I voted No my wife voted Yes, good thing democracy. The Nos had it though and I can still see the night sky.
>
Yes, because you're dimming a sodium discharge lamp, not a tungsten filament. With tungsten the lumens per watt efficacy drops dramatically when you under-run the lamp. With a discharge lamp it may still fall off, but to a much lesser extent.
Dimming is not new. The street lights in the road where I live were replaced a couple of years ago. After midnight they dim to 75% output, or so the letter from the council said.
'Intelligent' street light control seems to be becoming a large industry, e.g.
I couldn't find the way to Alpha Centauri because all the street lights were turned off !
Nick
It's also not new, being dated November 2010. The midnight - 05:00 turn off has been done already in a lot of areas, including a number of motorways.
Never had any in this village and I think it is better for it. I like to walk down the road at night and be able to see a starry sky. With modern LED torches giving a reasonnable light from a small source it easy to have one on a key ring to alert approaching vehicles to your presence . In most conditions after my eyes have adjusted I can see well enough by ambient light some of which is coming from house windows or a Porch lamp. Failed once on a really dark night with thick cloud, I could hear steps coming close and turned to see a chap walking up faster than me,stepped to one side to let him pass and trod on his small dog which I had not seen. The Howling woke half the street.
G.Harman
black at
accidents
Aye, I don't think Andy has experienced a cloudy, moonless night. It's unnervingly dark and you certainly can't move around as you just can't see *anything*. A single street light 1/2 a mile away will ruin that.
Even with a new moon starlight is ample to move around in.
So can the mugger before they find their victim, but then anybody sensible carries a 3D cell Maglite so they can see and a 3D cell Maglight isn't a weapon is it...
Yep, used to be part of a capture team on night time orienteering excercises. At night you can simply stand still and quiet in front of a tree and people will just walk straight past within feet of you.
Same for pedestrians, what is it with people not carrying a torch or wearing something light coloured or better retro-reflective on them?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.