Britain Shuts Off 750,000 Streetlights With No Impact On Crime Or Crashes 307
Flash Modin writes: English cities are hard up for cash as the national government dolls out cuts. And in response, the country's councils — local governing bodies — have slashed costs by turning off an estimated 750,000 streetlights. Fans of the night sky and reduced energy usage are happy, but the move has also sparked a national debate. The Automobile Association claims six people have died as a direct result of dimming the lights. But a new study released Wednesday looked at 14 years of data from 63 local authorities across England and Wales and found that residents' chances of being attacked, robbed, or struck by a car were no worse on the darker streets.
Editors : WTF (Score:5, Informative)
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Not only that, but "doling out cuts" is a stupid phrase anyway. Giving out small amounts of something you're actually taking away?
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It's like saying "We have no chips in the vending machine".
You cannot "have none" - but you can "not have any".
"We do not have any chips in the vending machine" would be correct.
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It's like saying "We have no chips in the vending machine".
You cannot "have none" - but you can "not have any".
"We do not have any chips in the vending machine" would be correct.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have any idea what you're talking about either. Both of my assertions are grammatically and logically correct, with the former using the "no-negation" form of assertion.
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It's like saying "We have no chips in the vending machine".
"you have no money" whether or not it's good English, my bank loves telling me this every day.
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It's actually supposed to be "dolls up cuts" describing the way that budget cuts have been dressed up and beautified in order to reduce public resistance. It also makes budget cuts much more attractive dinner dates.
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+1000
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"We knew what they meant so big deal"
"English is an evolving language"
Oh, wait, I forgot to post AC. Does this still count?
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even more so, this comment thread has demonstrated that there are three equally valid alternatives that could fit here. "doles out cuts", "rolls out cuts", or even "dolls up cuts". so even the statement "we knew what they meant" is false.
News at 11 (Score:3)
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Dubious assumptions are dubious (Score:5, Informative)
This is indeed good news for amateur astronomers. Unfortunately, they are among the only people who will actually benefit or want to go out at night under these conditions.
My wife and sister, in contrast, are now uncomfortable about things like getting a late train home and then walking back from the station in pitch black conditions, to the point where if they can't make arrangements for more secure travel either end of a journey then they will sometimes not go out at all. And yes, before anyone asks, there have actually been relevant crimes recorded in the relevant areas, so their concerns do have have some justification. There is a reason that police and public safety advisors have long recommended walking home along well-lit streets instead of dark paths late at night.
While we're at it, several sources have already highlighted other data, up to and including coroners' reports directly attributing actual deaths in road traffic collisions to reduced lighting, that conflict with the claims here of no harm being done. Those claims are also in conflict with more general evidence about how to design homes and wider areas to minimise the ability for criminals to approach targets undetected and the reduced crime rates that result.
In short, this seems to be based on one selective result, published in a relatively obscure journal and from a relatively unknown source that has some unspecified link to UCL for credibility, that directly contradicts established policing policy, public safety policy, road safety policy, architectural principles, common sense, and hard evidence. But yay for astronomers though, I guess.
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I'd be curious about the distribution of the lights. Turning off lights in cities isn't going to help astronomers much. And if they're turning them off in places where there are few people walking, such as rural lanes, it might help astronomers without hurting pedestrians. (Criminals would be less likely to gather there, though those pedestrians had better be really aware of cars.)
I could see it working if there were more streetlights than we really needed. If that were the case, it could yield positive res
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Unfortunately the places where they have been reducing the lighting in the UK recently are mostly either within large residential areas or on motorways. Our rural lanes are mostly unlit anyway, other than locally around junctions or specific places.
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Thanks.
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Brits are such a bunch of faggots.
If you knew anything about us, you'd know we eat faggots.
Re:Dubious assumptions are dubious (Score:4, Informative)
bike lights are basically worthless for seeing the road ahead and only useful for other people to see the cyclist
Only if you go with the trendy flashing LED "look, I'm here and I'm trendy and important" bullshit lights favoured these days.
I was cycling down dark country roads with more than adequate visibility using proper bike lights over 20 years ago, don't pretend you can't get a decent light these days.
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People are so poor they can't afford to commit crime any more.
Doesn't help criminals (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't help criminals (Score:5, Funny)
You still use torches? Get with the times, use a flashlight, you savage :)
Re:Doesn't help criminals (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the old school smiley at the end of the sentence was a dead give away. But young kids nowadays have Unicode smiley's to work with.
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Does Unicode have a special character[1] for an apostrophe that shouldn't be there because nothing belongs to the smiley, or at least if it does it hasn't been mentioned in the sentence?
[1] Or whatever it is they call them. Avatars, or flavorchords, or somesuch poncy shite.
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Crooks are afraid of the dark, too (Score:5, Insightful)
And cars tend to have headlights.
I remember a study from the 90's that showed eliminating lights around schools at night actually reduced the number of break-ins at those schools. The reasoning was that a) most people are afraid of the dark and b) a ne'er-do-well would need a flashlight, which would be easy to spot in the darkness.
Re:Crooks are afraid of the dark, too (Score:4, Insightful)
And cars tend to have headlights.
I remember a study from the 90's that showed eliminating lights around schools at night actually reduced the number of break-ins at those schools. The reasoning was that a) most people are afraid of the dark and b) a ne'er-do-well would need a flashlight, which would be easy to spot in the darkness.
It's also found that motion sensing lights are more effective than ones that stay on all night long for similar reasons. The light suddenly coming on can scare away prowlers who who previous hidden in the dark plus it attracts attention when lights are suddenly switching on and off around a building that is known to be unoccupied.
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The light suddenly coming on can scare away prowlers who who previous hidden in the dark plus it attracts attention when lights are suddenly switching on and off around a building that is known to be unoccupied.
Unfortunately, the also attract attention when they are suddenly switching on and off around buildings that are occupied, and they do it whether it's a criminal triggering them or just someone walking home late or a neighbour's pet cat.
We've recently had a bunch of work done on the streetlights around us, leaving it completely dark right outside our own home. It looks like several people have almost immediately installed their own lighting at their own expense to compensate (which gives you some idea of how
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Re:Crooks are afraid of the dark, too (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Crooks are afraid of the dark, too (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, but according to the grandparent article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk] reffered to in this article, this article is bullshit "Research suggests that road accidents have risen by 20 per cent in areas where street lights were switched off." So a twenty percent increase in car accidents, so shit for brain austerity fuck wit has simply shifted the cost from the rich back to poorer tax payers driving back home from work in the dark or driving to work in the dark. Hey, 20% increase in car accidents, de
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It's not just road accidents, either. I have family and friends near where that article is talking about, so I've seen the results directly.
For the younger generations we are seeing some people, particularly females, not wanting to go out late as they'll have to find their way home alone and no longer feel safe. Alternative: Everyone now drives everywhere after dark. Yay for being environmentally friendly.
For older generations, they are actually leaving early even when just visiting friends' homes for the e
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And cars tend to have headlights.
Unfortunately, those headlights also tend to be aimed at the road ahead and maybe a little ground just to the side of it. They offer little visibility into junctions or corners. A few modern vehicles do have dedicated cornering lights, but even those provide nowhere near the visibility into where you'll be going next that street lighting does.
Since we're not citing studies we remember, I remember one from just a few years ago that suggested the most cost-effective single measure we could take to save lives
Good deal (Score:2)
Other than business corridors, I think street lights should only be placed at intersections. My town cutback on lights starting 20 years ago. It was the right move.
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I wish mine would.
I live in a town with 2500 residents, and I can almost swear that we have at least as many streetlights. From my house (on a street that's literally 4 house-property-sized-lots long), I can count 8 streetlights visible from the property, front and back.
Maybe residents stayed home (Score:2)
Did they take into account how many people used the darkened streets? Maybe people felt less safe in the dark, so avoided going out in the dark.
When I bike home in the dark, I take a longer route with streetlights rather than go on the dark side streets. (I do have adequate lighting, but feel safer knowing that I can see blocks ahead of me)
So they stayed home. So what? (Score:2)
Did they take into account how many people used the darkened streets? Maybe people felt less safe in the dark, so avoided going out in the dark.
Ok, if that is true then where is the actual problem?
When I bike home in the dark, I take a longer route with streetlights rather than go on the dark side streets.
So we should waste money and resources and pollution lighting up roads so you can bike home? I'm all for biking but I think this is a needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few situation.
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Did they take into account how many people used the darkened streets? Maybe people felt less safe in the dark, so avoided going out in the dark.
Ok, if that is true then where is the actual problem?
If no lighting makes residents stay at home because they don't feel safe outside when they'd otherwise be out and about, that seems like a problem. Communities could reduce a lot of crime by enforcing a 7pm curfew, but that doesn't mean a curfew is a good thing.
When I bike home in the dark, I take a longer route with streetlights rather than go on the dark side streets.
So we should waste money and resources and pollution lighting up roads so you can bike home? I'm all for biking but I think this is a needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few situation.
Or maybe spend money and resources making residents feel safe and secure in their community?
Only children should fear the dark (Score:2, Insightful)
If no lighting makes residents stay at home because they don't feel safe outside when they'd otherwise be out and about, that seems like a problem.
Their perception of danger is of no concern to me. I'm concerned with the actuality of danger. They are adults and not children who ought to be afraid of the dark. If they don't feel safe outside then I'd suggest they spend their money improving their policing or move some place where they feel safer. Again, if they are scared of nothing (and the data indicates that they are) and decide to stay home rather than face the night then I don't see an actual problem.
Or maybe spend money and resources making residents feel safe and secure in their community?
Real security isn't going to come from a bu
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If no lighting makes residents stay at home because they don't feel safe outside when they'd otherwise be out and about, that seems like a problem.
Their perception of danger is of no concern to me. I'm concerned with the actuality of danger. They are adults and not children who ought to be afraid of the dark. If they don't feel safe outside then I'd suggest they spend their money improving their policing or move some place where they feel safer. Again, if they are scared of nothing (and the data indicates that they are) and decide to stay home rather than face the night then I don't see an actual problem.
Where's the data that says they are afraid of nothing? If this study didn't account for how many people were outside without lights, then it doesn't show that.
Or maybe spend money and resources making residents feel safe and secure in their community?
Real security isn't going to come from a bunch of wasteful street lamps. At best it is security theater and it definitely is a huge waste of resources.
Security theater can be effective it it gets more people to be outside and using their streets, and it makes the streets more usable and neighborhoods more livable.
Results in the USA have been mixed, some times streetlights reduced crime, sometimes it had no effect.
http://www.citylab.com/housing... [citylab.com]
But even if the streetlights don't actually reduce cri
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Criminals, like everyone else, need light to see what they're doing. And using a flashlight calls attention to them if they're in someone's yard. This is the reason why burglary rates go up during gibbous and full moons.
Got any data to back that up?
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... [usatoday.com]
So, to find out, the study team looked at San Antonio, Tex., from 2001 to 2005, a city of more than a million people for which exhaustive crime data is available. The team crunched nightly crime data, noting rain, daylight, indoor vs. outdoor locations and other environmental effects unaccounted for in past efforts. Murder happens too rarely in San Antonio to give a statistical signal, so the team looked at assaults, burglary, theft, drugs and vice crimes, traffic crimes, and "other disturbances," totaling about 130,000 incidents a year.
"It is the very error of the moon," wrote Shakespeare in Othello. "She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad."
Maybe in Venice, but not in San Antonio, the study concludes. "Substantive lunar effects on crime were not found in the data analyzed here," say the report. "Although popular culture, folk lore, and even certain occupational lore suggested the 'freaks' come out during full moons, this phenomenon was not reflected in San Antonio police data as used here."
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Criminals, like everyone else, need light to see what they're doing.
Not when I'm wearing my night-vision goggles.
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So we should waste money and resources and pollution lighting up roads so you can bike home?
Should one waste money on road repairs, and resources on pollution from cars just so you can have fewer lights? You're assuming (unwarranted) that the bike is somehow special and the car is the default option.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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... shutting off education in Wisconsin.
I'd say that this would show up as a noticeable reduction in the dumbing down of Americans but, let's face it, the bar is pretty close to zero already so there's not much down-side movement left to go.
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We started shutting off street lights here in places like Stockton California and Detroit Michigan quite some time ago. The impact on reported crime is minimal
I think crime in Detroit is already as high as it can possibly get.
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I observed three K-12 schools in Minneapolis fairly closely for thirteen years recently, and I saw nothing like that.
Street lamps don't help much (Score:3)
After quickly reviewing the evidence I may have to change my opinion, slightly. This Swedish metanalysis [cam.ac.uk]found that the 13 studies (8 American and 5 British), taken together,
Dammit as a self described sceptic I will have to change my mind, but wait.
Yes the crime dropped, but for the studies which measured both day and night crime, both dropped by similar amounts. This suggests either the control areas are somehow different in some other way or more likely that street lamps give a perception of improvement and a more upmarket neighbourhood.
As a fan of the night sky and I find it unnatural to live in an orange glow, moon light is far more romantic I stand by my opinion that street lights should be concentrated in city centres, leave everywhere else dark.
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"When you consider the ongoing costs of electricity"
Street lamps are generally on very long poles. Fill the poles with batteries rather than cables, add solar panels and use LED lights.
You could easily make street lights a net contributor to electricity.
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and you'll have thieves stealing expensive street lights
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That is starting to happen anyways. Once led parking lot lights came out Walmart was one of the big first customers. All new and a plan to slowly retrofit older locations have led lighting. The cost savings alone was paying back Walmart after 2-3 years.
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Hope nobody take heed of that here (Score:2)
To some it all: that's Great Britain; don't try it in at your hometown.
Maybe... (Score:2)
but it still makes it difficult for pedestrians, and put them at greater risk of injuring themselves.
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difficult for pedestrians
Carry a flashlight (torch). You will be a lot more visible to vehicles as a moving light source and it eliminates the shadows behind shrubs where streetlights can't reach.
Streetlights useful to remark road in bad weather (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a fan of getting rid of streetlights but...
There is one way in which I can see they make things definitely less safe, and that is clearly indicating where the edges of the roads are in really bad weather - in a driving snow or rainstorm, there have been times I've been really happy to have the lights on other sides confirming where the road was, because it was not possible to see that clearly through the windshield.
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What parts of Europe? Never saw that driving in England, Germany, or Amsterdam... as a tourist haven't seen that in Rome, Stockholm, Oslo, or again any other large european city I've even been in.
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I live by a fast road in the uk , part of it has street lamps. seven people died in an overloaded renault clio late one night crossing four lanes and hitting a tree, another drove into a railway bridge that 'moved' I can give other examples but i attribute most of these fatalities to idiots. Yes the road might be more than the average 'dangerous' but that is due to the risks drivers take. The clio driver later committed suicide without using a car.
As uk lights dont have bad weather sensors I see bad d
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It seems that for things like that, rather than bright streetlights, simple lighted markers should suffice.
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Some would argue that if you can't see the road, you shouldn't be driving. Personally, I'd like to keep street lights at intersections. I generally don't drive by GPS so having a clear marker of "there is a street here" as well as illumination of the crosswalks before my headlights are pointing right at the boy crossing the street I'm turning left onto are quite useful.
In west Michigan it can be over a day before some main roads are visible again after big storms and during long term storms you can have days where the road is not visible. Forget about side roads. Wouldn't mind not working those days but my employer has other ideas.
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Some would argue that if you can't see the road, you shouldn't be driving.
You shouldn't start driving.
But you should keep driving if it means the difference between arriving at shelter for the night or risking sleeping in a car in a blizzard with extremely low temperatures, with the constant worry another car might hit yours.
The Other White (Score:4, Insightful)
white lines would fix that
In snow?
It irritates me when it's hard to tell between the grey pavement and the grey road
With enough rain, there is no grey, no brown. Just water.
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Bad figures on both sides (Score:3)
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Lots of room for methodology issues. (Score:3)
The lack of accidents and crime are more likely related to a general trend in crime going down from before they started turning off the lights. ... Give me at least one full year worth of data so I can compare it to the prior year, and have half of the country keep their lights on so It can be compared to the same time frame as well.
Hear, hear!
There's lots of room for methodology errors. Here's another:
Comparing murder rates between Great Britain and the US is complicated by differences in reporting. The
Math problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Light use electricity. Producing electricity creates pollution. Pollution is responsible for a lot of death. Six people died because of turning off some lights. How many did not die because of reduced pollution?
A couple other things to consider.... (Score:2)
LED based street lights and movement sensors? (Score:2)
One of the problems with traditional street lights is they take a while to warm up. If street lights are replaced with LED based ones, would having them fitted with movement sensors be practical, such that they only stay on while they sense movement and then after that either dim down or turn off?
There is certainly research going into this: http://www.gizmag.com/motion-s... [gizmag.com]
I would be curious whether there are any off the shelf solutions, for retrofitting existing light sockets? This would be useful for apar
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normally I dismiss this "internet of things" as silliness. but here is an exception, where our autonomous cars can communicate to the road and the low power high efficiency streetlights can turn on as required (predictively, from knowing our destination) as we travel, and shut off again once we pass by.
as for retrofitting existing sockets with sensors, yes. home depot, lowes, grainger, and other building supplies stores sell them in various capacities (higher ones need more specialized suppliers like Graing
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Is this a generational thing? (Score:3)
I wonder who wants street lights, and why. Just as an anecdote: our 70-something neighbor is really proud of the fact that she and her one-time neighbors got the town to install streetlights on our street 30 or 40 years ago. Meanwhile, we - my family and I - find them obnoxiously bright. We'd love to not have street lights. Our street leads nowhere, so there is no pedestrian traffic beyond our few houses. Criminals are unlikely this far out of town, and anyway, most houses have dogs and/or security lights.
All I can figure is: my neighbor's generation grew up in small towns, wanted the feel of civilization, and streetlights are a part of that. Whereas we have lived in the big cities, and want to get away from civilization.
Anyhow, ours are also the kind of streetlight that light up the whole flipping world, instead of just the street. That never many any sense; stupid design by clueless people, bought by an equally clueless town. Our house is 50 meters from the street, and you can almost-but-not-quite read by the damned things.
Most streetlights are wasteful (Score:5, Insightful)
I see street lights as a waste of money.
Not just a waste of money. Most of them are a waste of fuel, serve no meaningful social purpose, create needless light pollution as well as emissions and waste resources in their creation and installation. We could eliminate vast numbers of street lights in all likelihood with no adverse effect at all while saving a lot of money and reducing pollution. I'm always astonished when I fly over a city at night how many empty parking lots, unoccupied buildings, unused streets and other things we pointlessly and wastefully light up.
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Not just a waste of money. Most of them are a waste of fuel, serve no meaningful social purpose, create needless light pollution as well as emissions and waste resources in their creation and installation. We could eliminate vast numbers of street lights in all likelihood with no adverse effect at all while saving a lot of money and reducing pollution. I'm always astonished when I fly over a city at night how many empty parking lots, unoccupied buildings, unused streets and other things we pointlessly and wastefully light up.
Are you the Mothman?
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I hate being only able to see a few dozen stars at night, and I'm live in a fairly rural area, and out "city" isn't all that big.
Travel a couple hours any direction, and it gets better, enough that it literally dropped my wife's jaw (she'd never seen it before), but it's still not like I used to get see in the middle of the Nevada desert or from the top of a ridge in the Northern Sierras at night.
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A lot of smaller towns I have seen change stoplights at night. From 11pm-6am, for example, a stop light with two small streets will turn into flashing red all around, meaning a four way stop. A larger road intersection will get a flashing yellow on the major road, and flashing red on the smaller road.
Makes sense to me, and I doubt this adds any additional crashes.
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Roundabouts are no solution -- I've nearly been hit head-on multiple times in roundabouts because people go the wrong way.
Do you live somewhere with an unusually high concentration of stupid people?
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The people who died do not have to be *in* the cars, they could have been pedestrians that would have been visible to the cars at farther distances than without the streetlights.
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Who should have been wearing reflective gear and walking on the side of the road that has oncoming traffic. Like the Highway Code says should be done.
I've had a few idiots who decide to dash across the road from a darkened doorway in front of me like a fucking panicked rabbit just as I'm driving along the street. You saw me coming, with my headlights on and everything, right? But it is somehow my fault if I hit you.
The highway code requires pedestrians to wear reflective gear? Do you have a reference for that? All I can find online is a "recommendation", but no requirement.
Re:Cars don't have headlights in England? (Score:4, Funny)
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The UK has hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras in use on public streets. Oddly enough, there still is lots of crime...
The cameras don't have flash and the street lights are turned off .
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The UK has hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras in use on public streets.
Actually, I was there a few months ago, and the local newspaper said they were turning off a lot of the CCTV in town, but, don't worry, because CCTV hadn't actually reduced crime rates anyway.
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In the USA, headlight standards and quality are so lax that most cars' headlights spill light sideways and upwards to illuminate signs. And blind oncoming drivers. And shine into bedroom windows.
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Only if it's a jalopy. Each headlight (low beam) is biased to the right. But there is no difference in pattern between right and left lamps. Some vehicles still have interchangable right/left lamp assemblies and there is no difference in part number between the two sides.
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Low beams [wikimedia.org]
High beams [wikipedia.org]
Any questions [hotrodhotline.com]?
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It's the same system used on EU and US models of BMW's.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. Each EU country has its own headlight approval process and associated code [danielsternlighting.com]. So saying that you have EU headlights is pretty meaningless. Or a sales pitch by the US dealer squeezing a few exta bucks out of suckers for something Yuropeean.
If you are getting flashed a lot, it could be because the leveling system which is required in many ECE countries but optional* in the USA is inoperative.
*The USA used to actually disable leveling systems on imports, including my Pors
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This is why my home driveway and front walk are illuminated.
As a side benefit, my outside lighting is on motion detectors. And its not the typical home improvement PIR detector and two floodlamps setup. So the 'bad guys' walking up and seeing the lights come on at night don't associate them with an automatic switch (confirmed by some interesting clips from my security cams).
At least make it motion activated (Score:2)
scrabbling around with a torch to get into your car (and check tyres etc before setting off for work)
I press my remote entry and it lights up the car. No handheld light necessary. But even if you didn't have that what is the big problem with using a light? It's not clear to me why you need to have a large and wasteful light constantly lit on the off chance you might decide to get in your car at some point during the night. At least have it be motion activated.
I have no idea why you would bother checking the tires before driving off as a routine activity. Do a lot of tires in your neighborhood wind up
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KCC's switching to LED means that longer term it'll cost the same as the half-lighting that goes on now
Where did those figures come from? High pressure sodium lamps still beat out LEDs handily in lumens per watt. Both have ancillary electronics of which the sodium ones are a bit less efficient, and the sodium ones tend to need bigger reflector assemblies which lower the efficiency, but the resulting overall the efficiencies are awfully similar. They also have similar overally lifetimes. HPS lamps also don'
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AA, what do they know!!
The vast percentage of roads in the UK have no Street Lights at all and cars that use these roads do not crash due to there being no street lights because CARS have LIGHTS.
Alot of the Motorway network has no lights and cars are crashing all over the place because they can not see.
Turn all street lights off and save the world and SAVE CASH
Cars aren't the only users of our streets. There are these things called pedestrians. /s
Cars certainly have lights, but sometimes they are overly bright, such as the xenon based ones and are enough to stun a pedestrian, but again the car is not the only entity benefiting from street lights. Also, in town pedestrians are wanting to be aware of obstacles or other risk factors, without having to resort to flash-lights - the population density warrants the use of street lights, where it might be the case out of
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Amazingly enough it seems like the best way to reduce crime is to simply reclassify it.
Much simpler to not record it in the first place. Given how useless the British cops have become, many people I know there wouldn't even bother reporting a crime to them unless they needed a crime number to make an insurance claim.