Comment by jaimebuelta 2 days ago
WTF? 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.
> During a normal night, you get used to the darkness surprisingly fast,
Then a car drives past and your sight instantly adjusts to that, but takes several minutes to adjust back. Then you're stuck in subjective total darkness for a while.
Or, if you're in an area with mixed lighting (e.g. you walk past a house that incidentally lights part of the street) then your eyes can never adjust and you have to walk through pools of total darkness. I know this experience from rare situations where a few streetlights go out in a row, and it's not as easy as you just portrayed it.
> At least that's my experience growing up in the dark countryside in Sweden
That's fair enough IMO. I don't think it's feasible or helpful to plaster every centimetre of every rural road in street lighting. But the comment we're replying to suggested removing them in cities "outside of ... active center areas". That's a different matter.
Yep, right around your mid-40’s in my experience. Friends have said it started the day they woke up on their 40th birthday.
I 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).
There’s a new-ish body of research that suggests aging is non-linear/happens in “cliffs,” and that the first big decline is mid-40s. Something to look forward to.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/15/1096799/aging-hi...
About the time you start needing reading glasses to see your phone or computer screen. Between 40-50 years for most people. You will develop an appreciation for the people who complain about small fonts and low-contrast color schemes. And yes, adapting to darkness takes longer.
This is a car-centric ableist take.
Not everyone has excellent vision. In addition to those who are actually visually impaired, your eyesight simply gets worse as you get older even if you had perfect vision when you're young.
And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
LED lights have way more capacity to be directional. There's absolutely no reason why street lights can't mostly point down to light the street and sidewalks with minimal light pollution to any nearby houses.
> This is a car-centric ableist take.
Growing up on a island with 700 people where the most common mode of transportation is probably bicycle (besides walking, or possibly moped), it really isn't :) People are really eager to jump on the "ableist" accusation, aren't they?
> And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
It really doesn't, at least it didn't for me. It's true that for some seconds you'll see less, but your eyes will adjust faster after that than the initial adjustment when you go from a fully lit environment to unlit, even without direct moonlight.
I'm not arguing for completely dark cities, that'd be bananas. I was just giving another perspective about how we can (usually) adjust to darkness if we let our eyes be used to it. Of course we should have lights in cities so everyone (not just us with good night-sight) can navigate without issues.
I am night blind, among other things and cannot drive. If an area doesn't have street lights it's much more inaccessible to me, I become fully blind and I usually end up not going. Lights off is bad for me, end of story. Whether my ability to walk around at night is a factor here is a subjective decision. I understand people in my situation are a minority.
Wouldn’t a headlamp or a flashlight achieve the same purpose?
Also it's terrifying for safety; way too easy to assault someone in complete darkness.
I 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.
Let's put it this way. The fear is someone hiding in the shadows to jump a person, and then dragging the victim back into the shadows.
Bright lights on the street create more shadows. All you have to do is step out of the streetlight and no-one will see you, because the light-level contrast between the lit street and the surrounding space.
If there aren't any streetlights, so the surrounding space has the same illumination as the roadway, then that space is more present in more passerby's visual awareness.
So your proposed solution, "Streelights on every street" actually increases the risk you are so concerned about.
Completely 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.
I'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.
Honest 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?)
> 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!
I mean I quite often see people holding a torch (or maybe a lit up phone) while they're walking.
I'm in an urban area, but it's not as well-lit as a downtown environment. There's street lights every 2-3 houses and they're not super bright.
I personally prefer this over a downtown-like bright environment since it makes it easier to sleep and the ambience is just better at night.
Clearly 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.
> Carry their own torch
You state this like it is a bad idea.
If you have a cell phone, you have a torch.
If you are walking in a place where there are cars, having a light on you is a great way to reduce your risk of being hit. So yes, you should absolutely be carrying a torch if you are walking near streets after dark. Nordic countries teach this in kindergarden.
When I'm crossing a street after dark, I always flash my torch at potentially oncoming cars. Even if I'm at a lit crosswalk.
If you are walking in a place without cars, then the place probably doesn't have the infra to provide street lighting. You may want a torch, depends on the phase of the moon and your comfort level with dim lighting.
You are starting an unrelated conversation.
This comment chain started with someone suggesting that in cities lighting be turned off almost everywhere, and someone replied that pedestrians won't be able to clearly see where they're going without a torch (and I agreed). Where I live, no pedestrian in a city would ever need to use a torch to see where they're going.
You've posted a couple of replies saying that pedestrians should carry a torch so that cars can see them. Well, maybe, maybe not. But that's a different matter.
> 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.