There has recently been a lot of publicity given to some research that appears to show that switching off street lighting makes no significant difference to things like the number of road traffic accidents or the rate of crime.

The study lead by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in collaboration with the Department of Security and Crime Science at UCL was commissioned due to fears that reduction in the provision of street lighting may be causing increases in crime, injuries and deaths.  The study took data from 62 self-selected local authorities in England and Wales who had made changes to their lighting. The study used the standard record of traffic collisions STATS19.  It should be noted that the data in this resource are usually recorded when police attend the crash, this means that its reports are biased towards more serious incidents particularly those where someone is killed or seriously injured.  The crime information that they used was the recorded crime from the Police.uk website. (more…)