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I was under the impressions that street lights promote safety by reducing chances of person to person crime. It’s harder to hide in the shadows and get away without people seeing you with streetlights. So a handheld flashlight doesn’t solve that problem.

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Absolutely does. Here's the data to back that up https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/projects/crime-lights-study

I feel this push for being able to see the Milky way every night fails to recognize the realities of urban life in non-matcha latte neighborhoods

Maybe the non latte neighbourhoods need streetlights. But we could get rid of them in the latte neighbourhoods.

The problem is that extremely powerful lights, as many cities are tending to more and more, can actually create more blind spots and makes it harder for our eyes to adjust to those dark spots. If cities adopted more, weaker, warmer lights we'd likely see much less damage to the ecosystem AND increased safety

Modern LED's are so darn bright, the right handheld flashlight might as well be considered a weapon.

In typical night conditions, a single Nichia 219-series LED at full drive would temporarily flash-blind someone with just a quarter of a second of exposure.

This is true, and among high-power LEDs, the 219 series is typically chosen for its color rendering and tint, not its output or intensity.

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