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Comment by jeffrallen | Hacker News Reader

I liked lots of this, but I really disagree with the night shot. What about the dignity of the people living along the bright (overly) lighted sidewalk, who lose their dark skies and dark bedrooms?

Street lights suck, and should be absolutely minimized, and turned off at 22h. If you feel intimidated by the dark, you can solve that for yourself: don't shine your fears into my windows.

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I'm confused by this sentiment. It's possible to illuminate the sidewalk without shining in through people's windows (or cause excess light pollution, for that matter), especially if the sidewalk is the only thing you need to illuminate and the lamps can be built lower. It's also not unjustified fear. The risk of being subjected to violent crime such as robbery, assault or rape is higher when there is no illumination.

There is actually a simple solution, which is to put red lights on street lamps instead of white lights. You can buy LEDs which emit only in frequencies that won't disturb circadian rhythms.

They are a bit more expensive, but I think the reason we don't do this is because planners/governments are probably unaware of the problematic nature of light pollution.

excuse me, what? No, if I need to walk through late at night, I want to be safe. You have some options: - put the bedrooms away from the street - invest in some curtains - live somewhere more pastoral???

> pastoral

Got cows in the backyard and a bright light shining in my window in front. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

At least my house protects the cows from the light...

The light won't make you safer. It might make you feel safer, which is a different thing entirely.

Not sure I buy that. [0] has some data to suggest that light decreases crime, and there's also common sense. If you can see a potentially sketchy situation a block down, it gives you the chance to take a little detour and perhaps avoid it entirely. The light also allows more witnesses, more people to step in if needed, more people to call cops if needed, and more chance for cameras to be effective.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/5/9/how-something-a...

Strikes me as a load of hogwash. Witnesses are next to useless. The more people witness a crime, the less likely any one of them is going to help, i.e. the bystander effect.

Street lights also don't increase visibility all that much, they increase visibility in the lit areas, at the cost of reducing vision in the unlit spots because your eyes don't have time to adjust.

Agreed. I wish there were a standard practice of turning off streetlights between certain hours, to reduce light pollution.

It's as easy as bending and cutting some sheet metal into shrouds so the light doesn't enter residential windows.

My place has this problem and I'm not sure why it does. The solution seems so cheap and obvious to me. Just shape the shroud so the beam only shines downward.

Recently I've seen that in our city new street lights on minor roads near buildings usually have a special form and lower height specifically to counter this problem

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