Comment by stevedekorte 2 days ago
But street lights don't have to use harsh 3000 kelvin LEDs, there are warm light LEDs (2400-2700 kelvin). For example, these lights are widely available for home, yet most people just buy the 3000K LED bulbs because (IME) it doesn't occur to them that there is a strong aesthetic (and health) difference between these colors. i.e. They don't care.
A lot of America especially has an issue with too many lights, and the lights themselves are too bright relative to the population. Found what I thought was a cool image on Wikipedia Commons while searching the subject that has the light use relative to the population density. Green's lots of light use, red is lots of population density. America's bright green light use. Yellow is fairly equivalent light use to population density. [1]
[1] Light Use vs Population Density, WP Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Earth_li...
They shine through my windows at night and are truly horrific.
They’re down the entire alleyway behind my place, and a walk to the grocery store at 7pm during the winter makes your body and mind think it’s sunrise.
It's probably getting better but the amber-colored LEDs used to be rather inefficient. I've also heard that white lighting can slightly improve reaction times of those in traffic and leads to slightly clearer captures for security cameras. I personally think these benefits do not outweigh how extremely ugly and unwelcoming they are, but "city officials just don't care" is not what led to the adoption of white LED street lighting at all.
Besides the color temperature, they are way too bright. It's like daylight in front of my house since they changed the lamps.