Our street lighting doesn’t need to be this bad

Most streets are either too bright or too dark. Streets and roads without street lighting account for nearly a third of all the fatal crashes at night. When street lights are too bright they can cause light pollution, something that delays the maturity of crops, aggravates astronomers, and disorients wildlife like sea turtle hatchlings, which can wander inland instead of toward the sea, where they end up dying after being run over by cars or eaten by predators. Exposure to high amounts of artificial light at night has also been linked to disruptions in people’s sleep health.

We need light sources that can be dimmed or controlled intelligently. LED lamps have this “adaptive lighting” capability and, as a bonus, are up to 50 percent more efficient than traditional sodium vapor lamps.