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Britain Shuts Off 750,000 Streetlights With No Impact On Crime Or Crashes
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.
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Amateur astronomers in Britain welcome the governments decision to turn off street lights . Telescopes are back in business.
That all the changes that reduced crime (starting decades ago) are making some things better in the western world.
Criminals need light to see too. Try painting graffiti on a wall while it's completely dark. And I'll far more easily spot a torch flashing in my garden than someone hiding behind bush. I'll be lobbying my local council to do this.
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.
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.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
It's not the lights that prevent crime, it's the darkness that enables crimes to happen.
Likewise with accidents. It's not the lights preventing accidents, it's the darkness "in the blind spots" that allows a higher risk of accidents.
All streetlights do at night is allow people to not carry flashlights or reflective equipment. People who ride bikes already know they should wear reflective gear and have lights to avoid being clipped by vehicles at night.
If the street lights are being reduced, that means drivers need to actually use their High and Low beams, and not just Daytime running lights (or no lights on some vehicles.)
Reducing crime on the other hand, I'd say it's a wash. Victims are harder to see in the darkness as well, so unless someone was being stalked for crime, I'd say it wouldn't have mattered either way. Just lights make a more compelling reason to avoid taking shortcuts through backalleys.
People who live in places that have bears and cougars will readily tell you that wild animals don't give a care about lights either, but suddenly turning on the lights will tend to spook them.
I see street lights as a waste of money.
If people want street lights on in their neighborhood, I think they should have to pay for them directly (adopt a street light).
On a related note, many stop lights are completely unnecessary as well... we could turn quite a few lower traffic intersections into round abouts or simply turn off the lights from 1am to 4am or something.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
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)
As an american, Its good to see the brits following in our footsteps. 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, as we've also been shutting off funding to most of the police departments. Crash statistics, surprisingly, remain unchanged as well. most cars in these locations dont run, and even if they did there arent any jobs to drive to.
Our next bold experiments are shutting off water in California and shutting off education in Wisconsin.
Good people go to bed earlier.
N/T
WTF: "six people have died as a direct result of dimming the lights" So in England, any non-urban place that never had street lights in the first place is like a Mad Max movie?
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.
After quickly reviewing the evidence I may have to change my opinion, slightly. This Swedish metanalysisfound 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.
The most dangerous drug
I live at the bottom of a dead-end, but for some reason there has to be a streetlight level with my bedroom window over the road that is brighter than the sun ( during the day ).
As a result, despite black-out-curtains, I get flashes as bright as inside an ASDA, throughout the night, if I have my windows open.
Obviously it's a Labour council, so they insist on spending more money even when spending less money would result in better outcomes ( eg: not waking me up all night ).
...scrabbling around with a torch to get into your car (and check tyres etc before setting off for work) when it's pitch black because the council's turned off the street light right outside your house!
Thankfully Kent County Council have decided to restore night-time lighting by using LED lamps, so this winter won't be a stumble-fest.
(On rural roads it makes sense, although they tend not to be lit in the first place. For residential areas though I'm far from convinced it's a good idea, especially as they're still left on in the evening - KCC's switching to LED means that longer term it'll cost the same as the half-lighting that goes on now).
In the UK most street signage is lighted. Some of it is just a giant lampshade with the directions printed on it. I find it unsurprising that much of the lighting could be shut off (either streetlights themselves, or the lights on the signs) without affecting traffic safety, as in North America most street signage is unlighted and traffic safety is not orders of magnitude away from the UK. In other words, redundant lighting turned off, nothing happens.
Probably not close to that many on the streets. Most of them are inside shops, and other private businesses, with most of the government owned ones covering stations or enforcing traffic rules.
In my city the less illuminated streets are the ones with more crime. There may or may not be a causation --- here is 3rd world, not Great Britain. I am wondering if lack of street light correlates with more crime because it is the neighborhoods the politicians care less about; if that is so, less street lights in such neighborhoods will signal that authorities really don't care, and it may increase crime.
To some it all: that's Great Britain; don't try it in at your hometown.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
but it still makes it difficult for pedestrians, and put them at greater risk of injuring themselves.
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It irritates me when it's hard to tell between the grey pavement and the grey road, but white lines would fix that.
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.
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 .
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. Accounting for that is very difficult, and is more likely to get someone to weight the data to make it say what they want it to say, and not the truth. 6 deaths is also far too few to start drawing statistical meaning ether. 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. They wouldn't be perfect, but better than what both sides have given.
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?
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?
I don't know how common this is, however in our area the street lamps are owned and operated by..... the electric company! The roads are lined with them at a frequency where every other lamp could be off and still have nearly complete coverage. It is quite aggravating, however there is little solace in fighting the "it is for safety/children" crowd.
In such conditions, shouldn't parked cars leave their parking lights on?
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It seems that for things like that, rather than bright streetlights, simple lighted markers should suffice.
Even if the number of crimes did not change, did lack of lighting impact the ability to solve or identify and convict the crimes that did occur? Also, did they check if the various types of traffic changed?
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 unexpectedly deflated?
In such conditions the cars were probably parked before it started, and if it's been happening for days their batteries would probably have gone flat.
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 bunch of wasteful street lamps. At best it is security theater and it definitely is a huge waste of resources.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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.
Street lights increase safety for bicycles, motorcycles and pedestrians.
Noticeably absent from that list:
Crashes during the night.
The UK is the world leader in crime reduction through creative statistic manipulation. Actions that were formerly dealt with (rightly so) by the police such as drunken abuse on the streets is now an "anti-social behaviour" issue and is handled by the local councils, not the police, by issuing certificates called ASBOs.
Amazingly enough it seems like the best way to reduce crime is to simply reclassify it.
Driving in Hawaii (especially on Maui or Hawaii island) I find areas with streetlights much safer be it for personal safety, riding a scooter or driving a car.
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
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...
I would be curious whether there are any off the shelf solutions, for retrofitting existing light sockets? This would be useful for apartment buildings and court yards, such that they don't need a complete overhaul.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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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There is one way in which I can see they make things definitely less safe,
because it was not possible to see that clearly through the windshield.
I think we agree you are in a situation that is distinctly less safe. I don't agree that the street lights are the problem though. It is you driving while not being able to see clearly through the windshield. Always bad.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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 US bumps the murder stat when there is a body and evidence of foul play. G.B. bumps it when they have a conviction.
Do they do that with other crime? If so, stable stats in the absence of street lighting might mean that any rise in crime is compensated for by a fall in identifying, apprehending, and convicting the criminals responsible. (Indeed, turning off the lights might easily result in LOWERED crime statistics at the same time it was causing a drastic increase in actual crime.)
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Not in any city I've ever driven in. Who leaves parking lights on when they leave the car? Not people who want to start he car again, that's who.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you leave your lights on at night when you sleep so you can "feel" safer. Also, feeling and being are very different. The "feeling" safe, does it serve any purpose?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In much of Europe, it's mandatory to leave your parking lights on overnight. The battery should last more than 30 hours fine with them continuously on.
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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.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I don't live out in the country, but I often have to drive country roads at night. Here in California, there's a white line marking the division between the road itself and the shoulder, and there's something built into the shoulder that makes it rumble when a car goes over it. This makes it much easier to stay on the road, even in rain or fog. (We don't get snow here, but I'd imagine that the sound from the shoulder would still work even if you couldn't see the line.)
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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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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 drivers not bad lighting
Genesis predicted this in 1982. "Now the city lights they're dimming one by one, it costs too much money to keep them on."
Uh. Germany specifically labels street lamps with "you may park here without parking lamps on" signs on street lamps that don't turn off at night, because they ticket you if you park next to one that turns off at midnight.
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You shouldn't be driving in that weather.
Since you're asking such a question, maybe you should wait until you are old enough to drive. Then after driving for a decade or two in many different conditions, come back and see if you still have the same question.
solar-powered street-lighting was fashionable a few years ago. What about retro-fitting all those poles? Also, there was an article a few months ago about all-night, glow in the dark street signs.
Why can't the streetlights themselves be motion sensitive? If they detect a car coming the light switches on. Perhaps have a time delay for the shutoff, since on reasonably busy roads the light cycling could be inefficient and distracting.
You don't need to publish a new paper to introduce reasonable doubt about the conclusions of one observational study that contradicts long-standing policy in numerous areas. Just look at the limitations of the paper itself, which is freely available, as are the well-known primary data sets on which it is based.
Unlike most of the media reporting over the past few days, the original authors do acknowledge numerous factors for which they could not or did not control right there on the front page of the paper under "Introduction" and further in an extensive "Limitations" section later on. Some of those limitations are quite fundamental; here are a few things this study didn't or couldn't take into account:
1. The crime data set they were working from did not distinguish between day-time and night-time crimes.
2. The crime data set they were working from did not provide precise location data so it was only analysed within larger areas. Those areas could have had multiple street lighting policies in effect in different locations within them.
3. The STATS19 data set they were working from is primarily about motor traffic and only covers reported incidents. It provides limited insight into the causes of injuries to pedestrians or cyclists unless they directly involved a motor vehicle and resulted in police action. It appears that the study also considered only fatal and serious injury incidents, not minor injury incidents or those causing only damage to property.
4. Neither data set controls for confounding factors, even obvious potential distortions like general improvements to road safety being implemented at the same time. During the periods when lights have been switched off near us, for example, we've also seen speed limits in residential areas widely reduced to 20mph and various safe cycling schemes affecting local road layouts. It is not possible to separate the effects of those different schemes based only on the STATS19 data that appears to have been considered in this study.
5. Both data sets provide only absolute statistics. Neither data set accounts for relative effects like fewer people going out late at night if the lights are off, meaning fewer people to be the victims of certain types of crime or involved in road accidents.
If you genuinely want to know more about this issue, I encourage you to start by reading the original paper. Here it is. Also read some of the opposing commentary by councils that have reversed decisions on this policy after trying it and then seeing their own specific data, and road safety groups like the AA that also analyse STATS19 and other experimental data and have previously reached very different conclusions about the effects of changing street lighting. Many of these sources are also publicly available and yours for the price of a few minutes with your web browser and search engine of choice.
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Your imagination might be deficient here. There are two problems:
1. Ice & snow filling the gaps in the road that make it rumble in the first place.
2. Snow removal equipment destroys just about anything built into a road that is raised (this also goes for reflectors along road centrelines and the like). Their whole purpose is to scrape everything off the top of the road.
That's simply impractical in much of the world. Road markings can be basically invisible for months at a time. They go to extroardinary effort to keep big roads clear, but even that takes a while and you might already be on the road when it happens.
(plus, the people clearing the roads have to drive on them).
This said, there are also alternative solutions to streetlights, like reflector posts along the side of the road. You tend to see that as you get into the *real* country roads.
That's very interesting.
That doesn't happen in any place I've visited (including some European cities, but I accept that maybe most of Europe has that rule and these cities were exceptions).
Also, people sometimes park their car for more than 30 hours, *especially* if there are snowstorm conditions which preclude you from driving away.
Adverse weather conditions can come at inconvenient times, like in the middle of a long journey.
I'm not going to try to refute the statistics. If they are claimed to be accurate, perhaps they are.
But maybe that's just because people are not dumb enough to stick to their usual driving habits when a road is broken.
For example: when they shut off the streetlights on a particular road, we now avoid that road. When we're on that road, we slow to a crawl. If crashes have not been impacted despite that, it's a definite sign that the road is less-safe.
For what it's worth, this road was the one which had the most crashes in the town I live in, both before and after the lights started being turned off.
It is also worth noting that in England, towns typically shut down completely at around 5pm.
Feeling safe is beneficial to your mental health. Except for all the internet tough guys here, who'd rather live under the stars with their trusty revolver under their pillow. Which is just a rolled up pair of jeans, not a girly feather pillow. Obviously.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Fewer lights, more stars. A winner.
Led lighting can be dimmed down to 30% (or less) and snap up to full brightness when someone walks underneath it. The better luminaires all communicate with each other, so that a car will cause them to light up several poles ahead whilst a walker will only light things up 1 or 2 ahead.
This system is being used extensively in the Netherlands and in _some_ UK areas. The initial cost is far outweighed by power reductions and labour costs (lamp changes) being eliminated - the cost of changing a lamp far outweighs the cost of the lamp itself.
Unfortunately, the UK is the home of the most amazing amounts of Jobsworthian behaviour. Council bureaucrats are deliberately electing to switch off lamps despite safety warnings and justifying this to councillors (who are mostly non-technical) by claiming that it's the only way possible, deliberately withholding knowledge of these systems from those decisionmakers.
I have pointed a few councillors at these systems. They're generally angry about not being informed of their existence.
These are the same UK councils who repeatedly raise parking charges in shopping areas and then wonder why small businesses are suffering as drivers go to retail parks or malls instead - they keep justifying the raises on the basis of "parking income is falling".
In the US, the "parking lights" on every car I've ever driven lights up all the same bulbs as turning the headlight on, minus the headlights themselves. This includes the taillights, all the marker lights, license plate lights, and even the nighttime illumination for the gauges and controls inside the car. I haven't tried it, but I doubt your average car battery would power all of that more than a few hours and be able to still start the car.
I'm not even sure what the purpose they are supposed to serve on our vehicles. In many jurisdictions it's actually illegal to drive with your parking lights on (even during the day), though I would guess your chances of actually being ticketed for it are pretty low.
In the US, the "parking lights" on every car I've ever driven lights up all the same bulbs as turning the headlight on, minus the headlights themselves.
So, not the same bulbs as the headlights.
This includes the taillights, all the marker lights, license plate lights, and even the nighttime illumination for the gauges and controls inside the car.
Yes, parking lights. If you're driving a GM car from 1996, it probably has it marked "P" next to that setting.
In many jurisdictions it's actually illegal to drive with your parking lights on
It's also unwise to drive with your parking brake on.
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