I appreciate how important it was in the past, but in the era of inexpensive and powerful LED flashlights, streetlights do seem rather redundant and wasteful.
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.
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
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.
I know some people think this is a silly question but the answer is, in my experience, yes. That's both in urban and exurban environments, in my experience.
Not usually, but sometimes cars drive too close to the edge of the road, and the road has no sidewalk.
And despite good advice (or simply due to a momentary circumstance), some people walk at night with dark clothing. You can turn a corner a hit a person very easily if they are in any half of your side of the street.
