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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.
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.
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.
You still use torches? Get with the times, use a flashlight, you savage :)
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.
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Yeah the six people probably died from Vitamin D deficiency, in England we don't get enough sun light and street lamps were installed to combat rickets. Looks like night time will be as gloomy as the day in England now, sigh.
The most dangerous drug
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
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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?
Does that apply to all the cars we import. Like BMW's, Range Rovers, VW's and so on? My 428i uses this: http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insi... I get light flashed at me all the time from other drivers when my low beams are on. This headlight system was engineering and built in the EU not the USA. It's the same system used on EU and US models of BMW's. You were saying?
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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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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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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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.
Brits are such a bunch of faggots.
If you knew anything about us, you'd know we eat faggots.