Are your streetlights on?

[Dan]

Delete this if it's already been covered (couldn't be arsed looking past the 1st page) but has anyone elses streetlights gone off? Second night running that ours and everywhere around us have gone off and apparently it's to cut costs?

How stupid.

Fully expect robberies to increase, in-fact I can hear the alarms going now.

[Rincewind]

I'll let you know in the morning whether the ones out side my house are on.

[Ozwin]

I'll let you know in the morning whether the ones out side my house are on.

Look out your window fool.

[Jaspa]

Yeah

Theyre on here, in the ghetto

Where did you say these lights were off :ph34r: :ph34r:

[Rincewind]

Look out your window fool.

They are off.

[Leicester_Numan]

Ours are on but they've been in a dimmed state for months which is a more common sense approach. I wouldn't want to be walking the streets with all the lights off. Too many nutters and eventually they too will realise the lights are off. I also expect a rise in muggings, rapes and murders. As far as councils are concerned, money is more important than peoples lives.

[davieG]

There really is no joined up thinking. Every organisation is having to cut back but they are all doing it isolation with little thought to the consequences and the impact it has on the cost of other organisations or individuals.

I live opposite CH and they've had a policy of making it 'difficult' for employees (not management) to get to work by car and reduced the number of parking places or put restrictions on them on their property. The consequence was the nearby surrounding side streets became full of with parked cars so they put in a load of yellow lines. What happened the parking then moved to the next row of streets and down the main Groby Road, so now they are putting in more yellow lines on more local streets - oh and creating a new car park on the CH grounds for 167 cars.

My house is now one of the few to have no restrictions.

Now I know lots of people have cars parked outside their house all day but this was totally predictable and ultimately costly with all the meetings and legal processes they have to go through to get these restrictions put in.

[Fox92]

It's a digrace in my opinion. They want to make cut backs, so they cut backs things like street lights. Next we will all be hearing about attacks and robbery. Why don't the government ever cut back on International Aid, and things like that? Our Country always seems to be the first to donate money to other countries, and all, yet they then complain we have little money and we need to cut back on street lights and emergency services! Hate it

By the way, mine are still on but I don't live in Leicester, or anywhere near it, so it might be irrelevant to other people's posts'.

[Guest]

I think streetlights should be off during the quiet time of night. It's a waste of money - incredible waste of money - and environmentally disgusting. If you have a problem with streetcrime in your area and you think the answer is streetlights then you have a problem.

Perhaps try putting that money into community education.

[Leicester_Numan]

I think streetlights should be off during the quiet time of night. It's a waste of money - incredible waste of money - and environmentally disgusting. If you have a problem with streetcrime in your area and you think the answer is streetlights then you have a problem.

Perhaps try putting that money into community education.

No-one is suggesting that street lights are the answer to street crime. We are suggesting that in areas with the lights off, the scumbag element will take advantage of it as it will be extremely difficult for witnesses to identify them. A bit of common sense wouldn't go amiss, dimmed lights save a lot of money and are still effective enough

[Guest]

Witnesses won't identify them anyway. If the areas are that bad my suggestions are turn the lights off at midnight and back on at 6 (that's if anyone has a job there otherwise don't bother until 10am).

then use the money on

Community education

or

a couple of cops patrolling

or

cameras linked to police HQ that can see clearly in the dark.

Our small sleepy seaside village is overrun with drunken idiot tourists for a couple of months in the summer, it's amazing how technology has improved and allows surveillance 24/7 of all trouble spots.

[Leicester_Numan]

I was just thinking about how well CCTV cameras can see in the dark. We've got them all over the place. All it's actually done is move crime to other areas, as will turning the lights off in some areas and not others. Personally, I would never risk peoples safety to save a bit of money. Health and safety laws exist at work to stop that attitude and they really ought to apply in some way here. Street lights were introduced in the first place for safety reasons, they can't suddenly turn round and say we're all perfectly safe with the lights off. Dimmed lights are the perfect compromise. Any money they save by turning the lights off will all go and more in compensation claims with people tripping over, falling down holes etc. You know it's going to happen

[stripeyfox]

Our lights have been switched off between midnight and 5am for a couple of years now.

[Guest]

I was just thinking about how well CCTV cameras can see in the dark. We've got them all over the place. All it's actually done is move crime to other areas, as will turning the lights off in some areas and not others. Personally, I would never risk peoples safety to save a bit of money. Health and safety laws exist at work to stop that attitude and they really ought to apply in some way here. Street lights were introduced in the first place for safety reasons, they can't suddenly turn round and say we're all perfectly safe with the lights off. Dimmed lights are the perfect compromise. Any money they save by turning the lights off will all go and more in compensation claims with people tripping over, falling down holes etc. You know it's going to happen

There have to be roads and areas that are not used at all in the early hours. Seems only ecologically reasonable to turn the lights off. Crime really isn't an argument. Darkness is NOT the cause of crime.

Our lights have been switched off between midnight and 5am for a couple of years now.

Very reasonable.

Have you been mugged and robbed many times?

[stripeyfox]

There have to be roads and areas that are not used at all in the early hours. Seems only ecologically reasonable to turn the lights off. Crime really isn't an argument. Darkness is NOT the cause of crime.

Very reasonable.

Have you been mugged and robbed many times?

Not so far....

[Guest]

Not so far....

glad to hear it, long may it continue. Though now you've announced yourself here ...

[leicesterlad1989]

Why doesn't the last person awake just turn the lights off...

In all seriousness why can't there just be less street lights, instead of turning them off completely?

[Guest]

Just turn them off.

[Leicester_Numan]

Crime moves to areas where the perpetrators have the least chance of being identified. I never said it causes it, just as keeping the lights on won't stop it, but it will move it. Depends where you live I suppose. When the first cameras went up not far from me, the crime moved to here. We've now had nearly all our paths fenced off, security doors have gone up and we've got cameras up the wazoo. I've got 4 on a post across the road from me. The vast majority of crime has now moved elsewhere. Most now is drunken teenagers causing criminal damage or graffiti and they get caught so it doesn't happen that often now. It's back to being the nice friendly place it always was. All i'm saying is expect a rise in crime in areas of the city with the lights off. There's is more to public safety than crime by the way. Walk around your own house with no light source and you'll probably injure yourself in some way. Blind people have to have everything around their home in exactly the same place to avoid injury. You don't get that out in the street. I really don't see why some people aren't willing to compromise on the issue and would rather put money ahead of safety. Some of you don't happen to work for local councils do you?

[bluesbrothers]

I work in Barrow, and during the late shifts which finish at 10, I've had streetlamps switch off as I walk past them.

I don't know why it happens, and it can't be because they're being switched off to save electricity, as it's still happening now when they've only just switched on, and seems to be a different light every time. I reckon the frequent static shocks I get at work have something to do with it - i'm like a walking electricity substation.

Seriously speaking though, screw streetlamps. The lights outside my house were replaced a few years ago, and now they're so bright I've had to buy blackout curtains. We seem to have this obsession in the UK with channeling every ounce of power in the grid into making streetlights as painfully bright as possible, to the point where they stop furfilling their purpose and just cause a nuisance.

Whatever was wrong with the old style of streetlamp with the subtle orange glow is beyond me. Nowadays, I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if i've died and am staring at the pearly gates, such is the blinding white light.

[Guest]

I don't see the need for four cameras on a post. We use the globe cameras.

[davieG]

I'd have thought they could use technology that switches them on when someone is near.

If the country wants to reduce it's energy consumption turning shop and office lights off at night would be a better option.

[Guest]

I'd have thought they could use technology that switches them on when someone is near.

If the country wants to reduce it's energy consumption turning shop and office lights off at night would be a better option.

That would be good too but I don't suppose the local and national government can insist on that. Why should tax payers have to pay for streets with no-one on them being lit?

[Leicester_Numan]

Our street lights were changed to bright white ones when the crime rate went up. They've now gone back to the subtle orange glow ones and dimmed them. From a vision/safety point of view, they're absolutely fine. I've got one about 20 feet outside my window. I used to keep my lights off and the curtains open when they were the white ones. I have to have the lights on now. Eco bulbs in case anyone was wondering. Just seems to me that the approach they've used round here is the right common sense one

[davieG]

That would be good too but I don't suppose the local and national government can insist on that. Why should tax payers have to pay for streets with no-one on them being lit?

They did during the Three day week.