Comment by suddenlybananas

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.