And then I hear
– Without these lights I feel more safe.
– Why are you saying this?
– They fool your mind. Imagine night in the nature. Your eyes see DEEP. You start to discover how much is between grey and black… you catch every movement in the low contrast. Here you are trapped in the light zone behind which you only see blackness that is scary.
– But the blackness is scary!
– And this is what you don’t understand. You’ve created this blackness.
*Glare is difficulty seeing in the presence of bright light such as direct or reflected sunlight or artificial light such as car headlamps at night. Because of this, some cars include mirrors with automatic anti-glare functions.
“Generally it is accepted that, the more illuminated a certain place is the safer it will be, therefore the night is a lot linked to the practice of less appropriated behaviors – the fear appears in the same proportion that the light decreases. And in this case, quantity of light is not always a synonym of lightning quality. „
“the light pollution is an ambiguous question: it is simultaneously a financial and an environmental problem, due to severe perturbations on the ecosystems, namely birds and plants, but fishes are affected too.” [1]
“After the London borough of Wandsworth installed 3,500 new street lights in the mid-1980s as part of its overall crime reduction plan, researchers at the University of Southampton decide to compare reported crimes before and after the upgrade. Despite the fact that increased lighting had been a mainstay of city crime prevention for decades, the researchers found “no evidence … to support the hypothesis that improved street lighting reduces reported crime.” [2]
[1] Planning the night – light as a central issue (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268331013_Planning_the_night_-_light_as_a_central_issue [accessed Mar 06 2018].
[2] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/02/street-lights-and-crime-seemingly-endless-debate/8359/
Marta Dydek
archandphil 
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