LED Streetlights Ruining Nighttime Mood for New Yorkers

Global LED streetlight installments have often been the center of controversy, even though the streetlights are capable of cutting energy consumption costs. Citizens exposed to the new LED streetlights have often complained the lights were too bright, or in certain cases ruining scenarios. New Yorkers have been the latest to complain about the glare and uncomfortable lighting emitted from LEDs.

South Brooklyn and Windsor Terrace in New York have been retrofitted with LED streetlights by Department of Transportation, but the lights have been described to emitting “icy arrays” streaming through local citizen windows, according to a New York Times report.

The new streetlights have been described by some local citizens as streetlights for a film set, a prison yard, ‘a strip mall in outer space’ and ‘the mother ship coming in for a landing’ in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The lights are so bright that novelist Lionel Shriver, who is half blind at the age of 58-years-old, claims she can read with the streetlights shooting in her window. Even her next door neighbor has turned to walking dogs at night with sunglasses on.

Shriver’s case against LED streetlights largely lies in the lights look ugly. Instead of turning to bright white lights probably more suited for surgical lights, she advocates New York authorities should consider using warmer colored LED lights.

The streetlights installed in her neighborhood have a color temperature of 4,000K and lean towards the bluer white spectrum. She asked New Yorkers to consider petitioning for LED streetlights less than 3,000K in color temperature, reduce lateral glare with lens or covers, and suspending installations before adjustments are made. New York authorities plan to install all five boroughs with LED streetlights by 2017.

----From LEDinside