I don’t have a PhD but I do hate light pollution. And while I’m too lazy to look up a source, I can offer an explanation, at least for one effect. Shitty outdoor lighting produces a lot of glare. Meaning if you’re on a path that is lit with very bright lights, especially if you can see the bulb directly, your eyes won’t adapt to the lower light and anything in shadow becomes invisible. Pools of darkness in brightly lit areas are a terrific place to hide.
Anecdotally, problem people are also afraid of the dark. There’s a park near my house that serves as a shortcut between two streets. It has two paths. One is a brightly lit paved walkway next to the baseball diamonds, and the other is an unlit service road. I usually take the unlit path because glare tends to give me headaches. I have seen more sketchy shit happen on the brightly lit path from afar than I have ever seen on the dark path.
It’s not actually less safe. No study was able to show a link between light and safety.
Interesting. Where do you take your knowledge from?
I did my PhD on light pollution. I don’t have the references on hand but it is well known in the field.
C’mon pal, we know you have at least 3-4 copies of that dissertation lying around.
I mostly worked on the physics side, being a physicist. But I did dug up a reference for you. You can start from there: doi.org/10.3310/phr03110
I don’t have a PhD but I do hate light pollution. And while I’m too lazy to look up a source, I can offer an explanation, at least for one effect. Shitty outdoor lighting produces a lot of glare. Meaning if you’re on a path that is lit with very bright lights, especially if you can see the bulb directly, your eyes won’t adapt to the lower light and anything in shadow becomes invisible. Pools of darkness in brightly lit areas are a terrific place to hide.
Anecdotally, problem people are also afraid of the dark. There’s a park near my house that serves as a shortcut between two streets. It has two paths. One is a brightly lit paved walkway next to the baseball diamonds, and the other is an unlit service road. I usually take the unlit path because glare tends to give me headaches. I have seen more sketchy shit happen on the brightly lit path from afar than I have ever seen on the dark path.
Just backing up the point, I took a course on light pollution and this was the “common myth” our professor debunked on the first lesson.