[HN Gopher] A French town where the lighting is alive
___________________________________________________________________
A French town where the lighting is alive
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 137 points
Date : 2022-04-17 11:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Does the US even regulate headlight brightness and function?
| epmos wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Nearly everything about vehicles has US federal and state
| regulation. Headlight regulations being stricter in the US are
| why US versions of European cars up until about the 1980s had
| different headlights than their home markets.
|
| 49 CFR SS 393, FMVSS 108 and a crapload of other regulations
| and regulatory interpretations. In general, these make IRS
| instructions seem a marvel of clarity.
|
| FMVSS-108 S5.5.11(a) talks about brightness.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > This phenomenon - where chemical reactions inside an organism's
| body produce light - can be observed in many places in nature.
| Organisms as diverse as fireflies, fungi and fish have the
| ability to glow through bioluminescence.
|
| Humans are also bioluminescent, we just glow to dimly for our own
| eyes to detect.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I for one welcome our bioluminescent overlords.
| teekert wrote:
| I once investigated it for a company. I found that Luciferase
| uses 1 ATP molecule for one photon. I calculated that I'd need
| kilo's of ATP per day for a 200 lumen lamp. We stopped the
| project soon after (we also looked at closed ecosystems etc).
|
| But maybe, with large surfaces, in situations where you only need
| very little light, It might work. A closed glass container
| though, I wonder, will it remain efficient? I think closed
| ecosystem haven't been that successful right?
| EricE wrote:
| I have a dark parking lot at a church that needs at least some
| lighting - it's a serious safety issue as that congregation is
| heavily weighted with seniors. Traditional lighting is often
| overkill/way harsher than it needs to be. Love to see alternative
| tech like this at least starting.
| istjohn wrote:
| I guess I'm the only one who thinks this is a dumb gimmick.
| There's no way this is more environmentally friendly than dim
| LED's on a full lifecycle carbon emissions per lumen-hour. One of
| the systems bubble oxygen. That alone probably uses more energy
| than an equivalently bright LED. These are not going to be very
| bright at all. Then you have to maintain each "bio-bulb" with
| nutrients which requires energy to produce and distribute. This
| makes no more sense than replacing street lights with glow
| sticks.
| bombcar wrote:
| One of the downsides of car-centric cities is that lighting has
| to be insanely bright because of the speeds of the cars. At human
| walking speeds, you can get by with _substantially_ less light to
| illuminate; but that won 't work if there are bright lights
| elsewhere nearby.
| basisword wrote:
| You can get by sure, but more lighting can help reduce crime.
| We have a few streets nearby which have non-standard street
| lighting. It's less bright and the lights alternate on each
| side of the street. It's great for the people sleeping in the
| houses on that street but people feel much less safe walking
| down it at night and if I were to decide to steal a car or
| burgle a house, I'd pick that street. At least from what I hear
| politicians discuss when streets are having new/more modern
| lighting installed the discussion is always around crime and
| personal safety and never around cars.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder how much lighting reduces crime vs just moving it
| around. If you have bright streets and dark ones, does the
| crime migrate to the dark ones? If all the streets are lit
| the same, does the crime spread out generally?
|
| Do people _feel_ less safe or are they _actually_ less safe?
| Suburbs are often lit like a Walmart parking lot yet I
| suspect the amount of crime is quite low.
| kergonath wrote:
| > people feel much less safe walking down it at night and if
| I were to decide to steal a car or burgle a house, I'd pick
| that street
|
| A lot of it comes down to feelings. We need actual data, how
| much does crime actually goes up, not how people think it
| does. Otherwise, these people need to pay for the
| infrastructure and electric consumption. There is no reason
| why everyone should pay for their feelings if it does not
| bring concrete benefits to everybody.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > more lighting can help reduce crime
|
| It works on a hyperlocal level, but on as whole city it's a
| zero-sum game.
| Faaak wrote:
| Actually I've heard the contrary. There is less degradation
| (broken things, trashing glass bottles, etc), because people
| don't want to be in places they can't easily see themselves
| and move to more lit places.
| EricE wrote:
| A good compromise is having a low level of steady light, but
| when there is motion increasing the brightness.
|
| It won't work for every situation - the constant up/down
| would be more annoying on a busy road, but we had a building
| with a large parking lot set back from a busy road that
| attracted lots of loitering in the parking lot. Swapping out
| the old parking lights to motion activated LED ones pretty
| much eliminated people congregating the parking lot at night
| leaving trash all over, tearing up the landscaping, or
| tearing up the lot doing donuts and other dumb stuff.
|
| So heck yeah, effective lighting can be a significant
| deterrence - and with things like motion sensors and LED
| fixtures with integrated dimming it doesn't even have to be
| obnoxious by default.
| Kye wrote:
| I haven't seen a credible study that shows more lighting
| reduces crime. I wouldn't be surprised if more lighting
| increased _reported_ crime at night in the same way more
| policing increases the number of people who enter the justice
| system until criminals adapt. But most crime is done in broad
| daylight or beyond the reach of outside lights, so I doubt
| lighting has much to do with it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| "Eyes on the street" is the key to safety. If you have enough
| people out and about on foot, you see less crime.
|
| This is not a function of any one thing.
| scythe wrote:
| It's not just car dependence, though. New streetlights are
| brighter than old ones, but we've been car-dependent since the
| '70s. It's CPTED.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_envir...
| noduerme wrote:
| Also, cars have gotten a lot brighter over the past 20 years or
| so. Since ultra-bright halogen style headlights became
| standard, it's become much more difficult for my eyes to adjust
| back to darkness after passing oncoming traffic. I always
| considered them hazardous to other drivers. My car's from the
| 80s and after passing some of these monstrous lit up things
| it's hard to tell if my own headlights are on. It seems like
| there's been some kind of race to have the brightest headlights
| on the road.
| bennyg wrote:
| As someone with incredibly bad eyes, going from my 2015 Honda
| Accord's stock headlights to a Tesla Model 3's brighter LEDs
| have been a big boon on my driving confidence at night. Just
| offering a different perspective that I actually like the
| brightness race since it's improved my ability to drive.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| On the other side of things, I have decent eyesight at
| night until I see one of these headlights, which is
| frequent enough that I'm half tempted to just wear
| sunglasses at night.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I actually like the brightness race since it's improved
| my ability to drive.
|
| Unfortunately you are not taking into account how that
| brightness impairs other drivers ability to see.
|
| I do agree with the parent, I do feel more distracted by
| bright flashes of blueish-white light from modern head
| lamps. Roads aren't flat. Cars bounce, dip, and hop over
| hills, bumps and pot holes. Never mind the jerks who
| regularly drive with high beams on or forget to turn them
| off when passing. Those sudden flashes of light cause
| floaters in your field of vision leaving you temporarily
| blinded. This is a problem that no one seems to care about
| and I feel like we are ignoring these issues on purpose.
| bombcar wrote:
| More and more I'm starting to be convinced that driving
| at night is just absolutely insane for various reasons.
| slifin wrote:
| We're collectively and purposefully ignoring an absolute
| ton of issues with cars
| munificent wrote:
| As someone also with bad eyes, everyone _else_ going to
| LEDs has been a huge hindrance to my driving confidence at
| night.
|
| The light your own car produces will always be only a tiny
| fraction of the illumination you see when driving because
| you only see the subset of it that gets reflected back by
| the road and other objects. But the headlights of _other_
| cars shine directly in your eyes.
|
| When I drive at night now, I see mostly harsh headlight
| glare surrounded by inky blackness.
| EricE wrote:
| LED headlight arrays are far more effective at
| eliminating spill over than HID or halogen lights. My
| parents have a 2019 Acura RDX and the lighting on it is
| very precise and much lower than the previous cars they
| or I have owned. Being able to see farther at night
| significantly reduces the amount of accidents.
|
| If oncoming headlights bother you then the move to LED
| should be embraced. Nothing like getting swatted with a
| HID projector lamp.
|
| LED arrays are also a lot more compact, so features like
| self leveling will hopefully be more likely to spread to
| more models instead of being purely a luxury feature,
| further reducing the amount of overspill in oncoming
| headlights.
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| As someone who see fairly well in the dark: I too often
| find myself nearly unable to see what's in front of me
| because of the car behind. It also makes judging the
| distance and speed of a passing vehicle a literal pain.
| celtain wrote:
| I'm not trying to criticize you, car dependence isn't your
| fault, but it would be nice if somebody with "incredibly
| bad eyes" wasn't forced to operate a piece of heavy
| machinery just to get around in the first place.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I think what you are noticing is that the frequency of light
| emitted from halogen is very wide and generally warmer in
| color (almost orange), but at the other end of the scale, LED
| lights are a very narrow range of (blue white) light
| frequencies whilst being energy efficient makes it harder to
| see at night because the eyes are not used to this narrow
| band of light frequencies.
|
| What I dont like about LED's is I can see them flickering in
| some situations, you dont get that with the warmer halogen
| bulbs, but even with halogen bulbs, you can see how a car is
| wired by seeing which brake light comes on first as the
| electricity moves down the circuit to the next brake light.
| In other words you can work out what side the wiring loom
| runs down to the back of the car!
| agumonkey wrote:
| Car requires a lot of infrastructure that are very costly.
| Traffic control, safety equipment, road bumps (how ironic)
| because indeed cars are fast and heavy. Biking made me realize
| how much it took to get a full fledged car culture.
| ars wrote:
| Biking also made me realize just how incredibly useful cars
| are, which completely explains why cities are willing to
| spend so much money effort and space for them.
|
| I've tried biking walking public transportation, cars are
| just better. I still bike for certain trips, but it's limited
| in usefulness.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's really on a city per city basis, but so far my rule of
| thumb is any dense city will be slower by car. You drive
| around 18mph .. a bit above me (with a mediocre health and
| a bad bike) but my path is often shorter and I don't suffer
| from traffic jam.
|
| Every time I used car or public transportation it was
| longer, more random (couldn't even tell when I'd reach my
| destination), costlier, more stressful during (angry
| drivers everywhere) and after (no certainty to find a safe
| parking spot).
| nicoco wrote:
| I would be interested in knowing which country you live in?
| Can you elaborate what makes you say cars are better?
| mijamo wrote:
| I don't own a car and live in a very cycling friendly
| place, but even I have to admit that a car is very
| convenient : - you can transport several person at once.
| If you have kids this is very valuable. - can go longer
| distances. I wouldn't go more than 15km on my bike as a
| mean of transportation, as opposed to as an activity in
| itself - you don't get wet when it rains - you can
| actually transport stuff. I do my regular shopping on my
| bike but for gardening I need to rent a car. Same for
| several things (large packs of stuff, pet food etc.) -
| you are just more free to go wherever, especially on a
| weekend. With public transport you are very limited and
| can't access a lot of wild places. I actually force
| myself to rent a car once a month so that I go around to
| different places and not restrict myself to my immediate
| surroundings and what I can access with public transport.
|
| That said, I do not plan to own a car as long as I live
| in a major city, it is just financially unsound and not
| really needed for me on a daily basis as I don't have
| kids.
| gernb wrote:
| I ran into this issue moving from the USA (owning a car
| for 15yrs) to another country where public transportation
| is the norm. Lived without a car for 15yrs.
|
| For the most part I didn't miss the car. I just took it
| as "life".
|
| But, a few friends owned a car and a few times a year I'd
| met up with them and notice that my world seemed 4x
| larger with car. They were going all over the place
| because it was easy and comfortable and while I wasn't a
| hermit I stuck to easy to get to places. I also joined a
| surfing group and the person that ran it owned a van and
| we would not have been able to get to the various beaches
| without it in any reasonable time frame using public
| transportation.
|
| Another area was running errands. Back in car centric USA
| I might spend a Saturday going to 3-5 places (Home Depot,
| Costco, Target, the Mall) and at each place I might buy
| something I needed and just put it in the trunk and carry
| on. Where as in my 2nd life I could only go to a single
| store in a day because I needed to carry what I bought.
| Maybe that's good but it felt frustating not to be able
| to get shit done as quickly. Sometimes I could order or
| have things shipped but it took an extra 10 minutes to
| fill out the forms, more if there's a line, and then I
| had to be home to receive the packages.
| ars wrote:
| You can't take passengers in a bike. (Edit: Fixed, thanks
| agumonkey.)
|
| You can't transport large or bulky items.
|
| You are limited in how much you can transport (how much
| can fit in your backpack basically).
|
| You can't safely store things. The value of a mobile
| location to store items is vastly overlooked by people
| who hate cars.
|
| Cars are faster if you are going more than about a mile -
| even including parking.
|
| You can't ride a bike in bad weather. Hard rain is very
| unpleasant, and snow is impossible.
|
| If you live in a place with hills, bikes are just not
| practical.
|
| Bumps in the road, potholes, etc, are very dangerous in a
| bike. There's a spot near me that has these "ripples" in
| the pavement that you can't easily see, and I fell after
| going on them, now I know to avoid them, but any new
| biker will also fall.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > You can't take passengers in a car.
|
| You can take passengers in a car ;)
|
| the carriage limit is real, the mobile storage aspect is
| true too, weather is nasty
| gamegoblin wrote:
| > You can't take passengers in a bike.
|
| Mostly true, though plenty of bikes can haul 1-2 kids or
| 1 extra adult. There is a guy in my neighborhood I see
| take his kids to school every day in one of these.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20791435/radwagon-
| electric...
|
| > You can't transport large or bulky items.
|
| Cargo bikes or bike trailers are extremely nice in flat
| cities, and even in hilly cities, e-bikes make them
| feasible. I routinely haul 100lbs up hills in Seattle
| with a trailer behind an e-bike.
|
| Here's an article by (admittedly a bit of a bike fanatic)
| about hauling patio sets, stoves, grills, etc.
|
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/06/23/how-to-carry-
| majo...
|
| > You can't safely store things
|
| This is a good point and I think your observation about
| how it's overlooked is important. Going on multi-store
| trips in a bike is mildly annoying since you often have
| to take what you got from one store into the next store
| because you can't leave it on your bike.
|
| > Cars are faster if you are going more than about a mile
| - even including parking.
|
| This is _highly_ dependent on the city you 're in. In
| Seattle, bike is, by far, the fastest way for me to
| commute. My commute is 6 miles (West Seattle to
| Downtown). Biking, door-to-door, is 25 minutes. It's 35
| minutes by bus or car. This is because a large chunk of
| the trip is on a dedicated use bike trail without stop
| lights or traffic.
|
| > You can't ride a bike in bad weather
|
| Amsterdam has pretty bad weather (it rains 50% of days of
| the year), yet somehow they have extremely high cycling
| rates. For me (in Seattle, also lots of rain), the game
| changer was getting a proper bike poncho:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLM_mTUuHlc
|
| I agree that a torrential downpour like what you might
| get in the midwest is not realistic to cycle in. But for
| light to medium rain, the poncho punches above its
| weight.
|
| > snow is impossible
|
| They make it work in Finland
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
|
| > If you live in a place with hills, bikes are just not
| practical.
|
| Seattle and SF are both quite hilly, yet both have among
| the highest rates of cycle usage. This is a barrier for
| those starting from a low level of fitness, though. And
| even for otherwise fit people, it takes a few weeks for
| your legs to adjust to the new movement pattern.
|
| E-bikes make hills trivial, though, which is why they are
| exploding in popularity (in Seattle at least).
|
| > Bumps in the road, potholes, etc, are very dangerous in
| a bike.
|
| Agreed. This is one of the reasons it's so important to
| have dedicated bike infrastructure. Road damage is
| proportional to the 4th power (!!) of a vehicle's weight.
| So cyclist infrastructure, once built, degrades extremely
| slowly compared to car infrastructure.
| bombcar wrote:
| The "shortcut" feature of bikes is something that cities
| should _design_ for. Making a car "go the long way
| around" is basically painless for the driver, and a well
| designed city they may not even notice.
|
| But bikes and walkers should have the advantage of more
| direct routes that take less time. Steps on roads on
| Queen Anne Hill being a good example, but there should be
| more of that type of thing. Grade separate bike lanes,
| bike tunnels, etc. They can be surprisingly thin and
| sneaking them in works wonders.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > You can't take passengers in a bike.
|
| I take my 8 and 11y old daughters on my old granny bike.
| One on the handlebar, the other upright on the rear rack.
|
| Besides you don't need passengers when everybody can take
| his own bike and chit chat while riding.
|
| > You can't transport large or bulky items. > > You are
| limited in how much you can transport (how much can fit
| in your backpack basically).
|
| False. Anecdote, I once bought a tree at a garden center.
| Everywhere I looked, people where struggling to put
| plants without spilling dirt on the trunk of their
| van/wagon. The only 3 who were fine were a pro with a
| pickup bed, a middle age guy with...a convertible and
| me...with a bicycle trailer made to carry kids.
|
| > Cars are faster if you are going more than about a mile
| - even including parking.
|
| Not so true. Cars are marginally faster or plain slower
| in many urban areas with lots of traffic lights and/or
| with heavy traffic.
|
| > You can't ride a bike in bad weather. Hard rain is very
| unpleasant, and snow is impossible.
|
| false. Hard rain is very unpleasant for drivers, most
| barely see anything. At least cyclists see where they are
| going. Also unless you live in a place hit by moonson,
| rain is rarely an issue. For the many days that forecast
| some rain, the actual chance of being riding at the exact
| moment it rains is not that high. There are not that manu
| days in a year hit by continuous rain all day long. Also
| I've commuted on snow for years, and more efficiently
| than many car drivers thanks to very efficient bicycle
| studded tires. In cycling we say there is no bad weather,
| only bad equipment. You wouldn't drive your convertible
| open during a thunderstorm, right?
|
| > If you live in a place with hills, bikes are just not
| practical.
|
| Not true anymore with e-bikes. Also fitness come with
| practice.
|
| > Bumps in the road, potholes, etc, are very dangerous in
| a bike
|
| You just learn to avoid them. Also skills increase with
| practice. Also there are bikes an bike. Using bigger tire
| volume help tremendously. Overall driving a car is much
| more dangerous. Despite the protection, odds of dying are
| statistically higher. Perception of danger in cycling is
| similar to people afraid of boarding a plane. Irrational.
| As is the perception of safety in cars.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Bike commuting in the US is fraught with peril - even in
| places with bike lanes.
|
| Also because of suburban sprawl your commute on a bike can
| be an hour easy. I tried biking to work for a while - 23
| minute drive but an hour or more on a bike. Great workout,
| but the lack of proper bike paths meant a few times broken
| glass gave me a flat miles (5-10) from home.
|
| If you like a few miles away, maybe 5 or less, bike
| commuting can be a good option. Very few people live that
| close to work though.
| kergonath wrote:
| What's even more frustrating is that most people have
| integrated that with the "infrastructure you have to have"
| and then whine about the cost of a bike lane. We seem to have
| accepted that putting billions into motorways was ok, and use
| that against any other form of transport.
| agumonkey wrote:
| That is true. The old ways are an expected cost.
|
| Also bike infrastructure degrades very slowly over time.
| gernb wrote:
| I'm sure this isn't enough money but ... car users pay
| taxes on gasoline to maintain the roads. Cyclists pay
| nothing equivalent. Of course cyclists pay normal taxes
| like everyone else. It does raise the question of should
| their be a cycle tax. Cars will have a similar problem
| soon, as they go electric all over the world whatever taxes
| come from gas will disappear and governments will have to
| find a new way to pay for the roads.
| davidrhunt wrote:
| At least in the US gas taxes and usage fees don't come
| close to covering the cost of roads [1,2]. In the US all
| of us pay for roads through other taxes because the use
| fees and taxes don't cover the cost of the
| infrastructure.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-
| tortured-...
|
| [2] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/
| kergonath wrote:
| > car users pay taxes on gasoline to maintain the roads.
|
| True. But then it's counter-productive, because it really
| does not cover government spending to build and maintain
| roads (and motorways, and bridges, and tunnels). To be
| fair, roads _are_ necessary and useful in a modern
| economy. But the same money on some reliable tracks for
| freighter trains could be even better in some instances,
| and now we have people saying that we cannot have that
| because trains are expensive. True, they are, but the
| comparison is flawed because we assume that roads are
| free.
|
| Indeed, gas taxes will have to decrease, and that will be
| associated with increased maintenance costs (EVs and
| modern cars keep getting heavier, which results in more
| wear and tear). So it's possible that at some point
| people will realise how much the debate is stacked
| against any alternative form of transport, but I am not
| too hopeful. Roads are just expected; people don't really
| realise they we had to pay for them.
| storyinmemo wrote:
| Cycling infrastructure costs far less. Road damage is
| roughly the square of the vehicle's weight. Also, we
| don't charge pedestrians for sidewalks.
|
| > "Increasing a truck's weight [from 80,000 pounds] to
| 90,000 pounds results in a 42 percent increase in road
| wear. Pavement designed to last 20 years wears out in
| seven." https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/06/22/murphys-
| law-how-trucks...
|
| > It would take 700 trips by bicycle to equal the damage
| caused by one Smart Car. It would take 17,059 trips by
| bike to equal the damage caused by an average car. And it
| would take 364,520 bike trips to equal the damage caused
| by just one Hummer H2.
| https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-
| weigh...
|
| When this all comes together, every cycling trip I take
| is a car left parked and that benefits everybody. That's
| why we don't tax cyclists for infrastructure and why it's
| counter-productive to raise it as an issue.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It's actually the fourth power over the weight of the
| axle, so almost all road wear is from very heavy heavy
| vehicles such as trucks and the like.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| I was under the impression it was proportional to the 4th
| power of a vehicle's weight:
| https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-
| heavy-...
|
| But this might be measuring something a little different.
|
| Regardless, in my city (Seattle), an asphalt bike path
| near me (Alki trail) is still in perfect condition after
| a decade of frequent cyclist and pedestrian use, and
| adjacent car streets are riddled with potholes and cracks
| despite frequent patching.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder how this compares to areas that have freeze-thaw
| cycles. Bikes do a lot less damage to the path, but at
| the same time bikes and walkers are much more noticing of
| path damage.
|
| The bike path near me was resurfaced recently, it wasn't
| _bad_ before but it 's certainly nicer now.
| warent wrote:
| This is making me wonder how light pollution would change if
| all cars become self-driving
| naikrovek wrote:
| > A French town where the lighting is alive
|
| The title of this submission reads like a Doctor Who story
| synopsis.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Reminds me of another very cool artistic project that used
| silkworms to build pavilions and other structures. Would be
| pretty cool if you could have a sort of symbiotic city.
|
| https://youtu.be/MUVv4wtyMPE
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Imagine it embedded right into the sidewalks/pavements to make
| them glow at night. Magical.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| There was something like this created in Poland:
| https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/poland-builds-a-solar-powe...
| partiallypro wrote:
| That could make you blind to your surroundings though, and
| studies show fairly consistently that well lit areas have lower
| crime rates. So imagine a dimly lit path that has a lighting
| system that makes it more difficult for your eyes to see your
| peripherals.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| I was imagining more of a Bright Tree Village sort of thing,
| but sure, you can go with District 9, and you'd probably be
| right.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > studies show fairly consistently that well lit areas have
| lower crime rates
|
| It works on a hyperlocal level, but on as whole city it's a
| zero-sum game.
| ars wrote:
| That's not true. You are assuming there is a base level of
| crime that just gets pushed to other places. But if you
| discourage crime then it just doesn't exist anymore.
| trgn wrote:
| Picture the ballroom of Beaty and the Beast. Avatar perhaps.
|
| Or anything else, dimly, but gloriously lit. No high-tech
| beams of light, that's just gross, but a mist of light. Not
| threatening at all.
|
| Already some walkable cities already bathe in this kind of
| light, they don't even need glow worms.
|
| It's unreal how degraded 99% of the public realm is, when
| there's for a fact places in the world today, hosts of a
| functional 21st century economy, where you feel like royalty
| just for being outside. Like, why the low low low bar? Ah
| yes, because we made cities for cars, not people.
| bandibus wrote:
| Fabulous. Not just for the light-pollution & energy side of
| things, but because softer lighting is the thing sleep experts
| have been telling us to introduce into our lives in the evenings,
| all the blue light filters for our phones etc, to help us tell
| our bodies it's time to sleep...
|
| But the comments here about bright light deterring crime are
| important (and true). Not sure what a solution is that deals with
| that AND helps us sleep better etc.
| malauxyeux wrote:
| > But the comments here about bright light deterring crime are
| important (and true). Not sure what a solution is that deals
| with that AND helps us sleep better etc.
|
| Every French home and apartment I've ever been inside (mostly
| in the Northwest) has been built or retrofitted with shutters
| that block out almost all outside light. They're installed on
| all the main windows including on living room and kitchen
| windows.
|
| It's just part of the nightly routine to walk around and close
| them. (Or, in the case of newer electric shutters, just to hit
| the main button to close them all.)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Wooden panes that you fold onto the window from outside is a
| traditional part of houses all over France. They have been
| upgraded to roller shutters, but not always replaced (both
| coexist sometimes)
| malauxyeux wrote:
| > (both coexist sometimes)
|
| Indeed. My in-laws' 300-year-old granite farmhouse has a
| mix of modern roller shutters, pvc panel shutters, and
| wooden panel shutters.
| teslabox wrote:
| Looking at the present article, while these bio-lights are
| diffuse, they are probably the wrong spectrum. Due to the nature
| of the light-sensitive proteins in our eyes, humans do best with
| orange light at night. Our peripheral vision is most sensitive to
| blue light, and there's a reflex where we look at blue light in
| our periphery. Blue light is exhausting for us. Intense blue
| light is blinding.
|
| Back when the lighting companies had all the money in the world
| to research their lights, scientists figured out how to use
| artificial light safely. Now that those scientists have mostly
| retired, and people alive today have no idea what it was like for
| artificial light to be precious, we're forgotten everything our
| predecessors figured out. Just last night I was at my current
| city's newest hotel, and while the lights are mostly pretty good,
| they also have a bunch of 5000K LED fixtures mounted at exactly
| eye level. Light is mostly useful to us humans when is bounces
| off of things.
|
| In the 1970's the outdoor lighting industry standardized on High
| Pressure Sodium bulbs, because they're incredibly energy
| efficient AND because they're an almost blue-free light source.
| Low pressure sodium [LPS] bulbs are even more efficient and a
| perfect single-wavelength of orange (~590nm), but only a few
| cities (Flagstaff Arizona) really standardized on LPS.
|
| I was whining to someone about how Phoenix, Arizona switched out
| its safe HPS streetlamps for 5000K LEDs in 2016 (I think they
| switched these to ~3000K after people complained about 5000K's
| effects on wildlife). The guy knew exactly what I was talking
| about, and said "I wrote the 1982 report that resulted in
| Phoenix's 1984 lighting ordinances." He'd recommended LPS, but
| the police didn't like how people have no color perception when
| things are lit with the single wavelength of LPS. HPS has a bit
| of a spread of spectrum from red -> yellow, with a peak at the
| pleasant orange color.
|
| Arizona DOT is gradually switching out the safe HPS lights for
| defective LEDs. At first these were 5000K, but I watched them
| switch out one intersection's functional 5000K light for what I
| think is 3000K. LED streetlights' light is not nearly diffuse
| enough. I've come to referring to the bright spot under the
| lights as a 'cone of destruction', and have taken to lowering my
| car's street lamp visors to protect my eyes from the glare of
| passing under these streetlights.
|
| Flagstaff Arizona uses pure-orange LED streetlamps, now that LPS
| bulbs are no longer being manufactured. These are wonderful...
| Not as nice as LPS, but 1000x better than "white" LED
| streetlamps.
|
| If you're interested in the guy's 1982 report about street
| lights, give this comment an upvote, and I'll maybe work on that
| blog post.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| They've been retiring the incandescent street lights around
| here and the new white LED bulbs they've been replacing them
| with are obnoxiously bright. I feel bad with the people on the
| 2nd stories because they're basically shining right into the
| windows. The orange LEDs sound great.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-18 23:01 UTC)