The growing number of councils switching off street lights to save money has ignited concerns among road safety groups and MPs (BBC News).
The UK’s 7.5m street lights cost around £500m each year to power. Schemes to switch them off in the early hours have already started or are planned in areas including Swansea, Essex, Leicestershire, Devon and parts of Yorkshire.
Councillors in Leicestershire say a scheme which permanently switched off 60 street lights and turned off 1,300 village lamps between midnight and 5:30am has saved money. The county council plans to turn off 1,000 more lights in a move expected to save about £19,000 over the first 12 months.
Matthew Lugg, Leicestershire’s director of environment and transport, said: "Experience from other councils shows that neither accidents nor crime increase and, in some areas, anti-social behaviour can decrease as it makes areas less attractive to hang around.”
However, Louise Ellman, transport select committee chairwoman, said: “I am extremely concerned that financial pressures are leading to steps which can jeopardise people’s lives and increase the number of injuries.
"We’ve made great progress in recent years in reducing the number of deaths and injuries on our roads. It would be tragic if by switching the lights off that progress was to be put back many years."
Click here to read the full BBC report.
Making roads safer costs money as well. What’s the point of saving it on one thing and then spending it on another. Just leave the lights alone we need them for safety. You just watch the crime rate go up now. What about the cctv cameras that need that light. When people have been attacked it was only those that help find the culprits.
Jean Wellerd, Milton Keynes
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Matthew Lugg can claim all he likes that there have been no reports of increased incidents or fatalities, injuries and crime by other local authorities, but if this is really the case why have councils been wasting our money installing and running street lighting for years and years if it makes no difference? Incidentally if people are having issues with anything from antisocial behaviour to burgulary the first thing that people get advised to do is erect security lighting. It’s obvious that figures and statistics can be manipulated to show whatever you want them to! It is utter rubbish to suggest that switching off lighting will not make roads less safe for all users! They’ll just tell us it hasn’t and hope we believe it!
PS I like the idea about the head lights, but it seems a little unrealistic and does not help if someone finds themselves having to make an unplanned journey on foot. I’m also pretty sure that it would’nt be long before poor motorists began complaining that they were dazzeled by the lights of the pedestrian as we are taught to walk faceing on-coming traffic!
Ann Weir Leicestershire
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I recently spent a fortnight in Austria. We attended a traditional alpine evening at a refuggio (a restaurant in the mountains). Afterwards, we walked down unlit country roads to our hotel in the village below. We all wore ‘hedlights’ available through GEM (Guild of Experienced Motorists) and advertised this month in their magazine, “Good Motoring”. A ‘hedlight’ fits on the head with adjustable elastic straps and makes you look like a miner. It has four settings with the brightest, at 32 LEDs, capable of lighting up the road ahead brilliantly (excuse the pun). The fifth setting is two very bright red LEDs. Yes; you will get your leg pulled in a ‘hedlight’ but you will be seen a mile away. Is this the answer to the problem of having to walk after dark on unlit rural roads with no pavements?
LEDs, ‘hedlights’ and reflective materials were not available in the Fifties when the Department of Transport told us “when out at night, wear something white”. Good advice that still applies.
Roy Buchanan, Sutton
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My Son was hit by a HGV on an unlit road in Leicestershire in 2004. He died of his injuries. He was walking a route that has no pavements,and was unlit. He had little choice as neither of the two routes available to him had the benefit of footways or lighting. The driver was travelling in excess of the speed limit for his vehicle on a single carriageway road. Despite this he was travelling on dipped headlights and claimed he did not see my son. Leicestershire County Council have to accept that we now live in a 24 hour society, and people need to travel around during hours of darkness. Leicestershires Road Fatality Figures are consistently high compared with other authorities. I fear that they will be higher than ever due to this grossly stupid incompetent decision. They should remember that its our money they spend and I’m sure that anyone who has to live with the life long loss of their child or any family member would not opt to have money saved through means that will further endanger lives.Find the savings needed eleswhere because this saving will cost lives!
Ann Weir Leicestershire
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In built-up areas, where the speed limit was always 30mph, vehicles displayed only side lights after dark. They were often decorative things on the wings. Just before midnight, the street lights went off. Large clear globes suspended from cast iron posts. On leaving a built up area and entering unlit roads, dipped headlights were used. Forty watt with tarnished reflectors that gave a warm glow – rather romantic actually. All cyclists had front and rear lights. They were called dyno-hubs. I don’t recall huge numbers of accidents caused by unlit streets. Probably because most people were indoors by eleven anyway.
But this was the early Fifties – and I was 10. It’s nice to reminisce isn’t it?.
Roy Buchanan, Sutton
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Since the lights are being switched off – why fight it – we all know that the local authorities need to save money which will be cut from their budget. Why not start looking for ways to make our roads safer with more education about how we all use the roads, lower and more consistent speed limits, more traffic police and I am sure others can think progressively about the future without street lighting.
Les Owen Hertfordshire
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