The designers of the latest LED street lights fall into the trap of “brighter is always better.”  That’s not necessarily true because of the drawbacks of bright, glaring white light at night.

@ Mercurylamps and Miss Cuddly, I agree as well that driving beneath warmer orange light from SOX or HPS is more ergonomic than driving under LED light. The glare from bright white LED’s could actually make driving in the dark more hazardous as they can impede vision and lead to eye fatigue. 

HPS light is more ideal for roads and neighborhoods because of the relatively more gentle light that won’t impede drivers’ vision or create light pollution that disrupts sleep. I’m happy to say there’s still plenty of HPS in my town.

The designers of the latest LED street lights fall into the trap of “brighter is always better.”  That’s not necessarily true because of the drawbacks of bright, glaring white light at night.

@ Mercurylamps and Miss Cuddly, I agree as well that driving beneath warmer orange light from SOX or HPS is more ergonomic than driving under LED light. The glare from bright white LED’s could actually make driving in the dark more hazardous as they can impede vision and lead to eye fatigue. 

HPS light is more ideal for roads and neighborhoods because of the relatively more gentle light that won’t impede drivers’ vision or create light pollution that disrupts sleep. I’m happy to say there’s still plenty of HPS in my town.

How true.

There's still plenty here, but the march of the LED's grows ever closer. Out street is still HPS, but we can see LED's on the major roads at each end 

Thats Unfortunate...

I like the nuclear waste glow.... around here it is still very much orange...

as for the question at hand... I tend to be a night roamer, I take dark back paths on my night rides, I don't usually use flashlights with me into the woods or abandoned places and I Don't mind dark places in general, even if they'd usually be deemed "Scary" For instance the abandoned factory, I have been to, at night alone, my friends think I'm a nutter for that (probable)... I like the dark, Although I am also a lighting enthusiast, so this question causes internal conflict at a very deep level.....

I`m with you on this Owen, many years ago in my teens, we were driving around in this guys car one night and stopped at this big lake to chill out and down a few beers.
I don`t remember the reason for it now, but the driver abandoned me and my mate at the lake!, and we had to walk home!

Now, we were not that far from home, (about 6 or 7 miles), but it was a walk home down the back roads, with NO street lighting for miles around!, but its really surprising how well your eyes adjust to total darkness, and there was no moonlight this particular night, but the stars are quite bright when you see nothing but them!

I remember looking across the fields whilst walking along, and at how stunning the landscape all looks at night without any form of artificial light near it!, it was far from scary, but more peaceful and beautiful!
You also hear all sorts of cool noises of nature in the middle of nowhere at night too!

For me it depend. Here in town, the main highway is mostly lit in the busy areas with HPS but one section has been changed for LED in the last year or so. I prefer the HPS. The other parts out of town only have lighting at the busy intersections.

When I drive in the country it is mostly non lit which is better.

I don't like driving in busy areas at night because I can't tell which lane the cars are in when merging as they all blend together.

As for at home, there are not many lights on my street. The closest is my neighbor's across the street with is LED which I can see a slight glow from. The neighbor next door had two HPS lights installed at once point which were far too bright, but are no longer used and the one nearest the house was removed by the power company.

Update to the situation here:

We now have LED street lights in our road, and the light level is so bad we have street lights and darkness, so much so that we are reluctant to go out after dark as we don't feel safe 

To be honest, it doesn't matter that much to me to drive in lit or unlit areas. OK, I'm just 30 years old, may be it'll be different in some years.
But I agree, there are some really overlit areas! Today when we are talking about economy and all that stuff, why it has to be like this?

Here in this little town where I'm living (around 15k citizens), you find everything from mercury, to HPS and as well a lot of LED meanwhile - They understood it to not overlight the new LED-lit areas at least!

Update to the situation here:

We now have LED street lights in our road, and the light level is so bad we have street lights and darkness, so much so that we are reluctant to go out after dark as we don't feel safe 

It's not good, the lanterns that they use are under-powered and there are so many black areas of roadway in between the lamp posts. They are also glare bombs and are very distracting when driving.

Regarding driving, the best form of lamp to me is definitely LPS, we encountered a wonderful stretch of motorway lit by them last weekend on our trip, I think they must have been 135W or 180W SOX. Next best is HPS, there is still some of this locally, but not a lot, sadly the numbers are diminishing rapidly 

I’m slightly confused now, how do you get ‘underpowered glare bombs’?, are you still on the old 15 metre spacing up there?

I’m slightly confused now, how do you get ‘underpowered glare bombs’?, are you still on the old 15 metre spacing up there?

Maybe I didn't say it right, what I meant is the light from the LED's doesn't make it as far as the roadway very well. If you look at them, they are very bright, but the roadway is very dark.

I don't know about the spacing, but they didn't alter it, they just plonked the LED's where the HPS's previously were. And which worked fine, by the way 

HPS's previously were. And which worked fine, by the way 

Same with all the HPS & MH I've seen replaced here

Ok, sounds like they chose the complete wrong lanterns for the job?, the old spacing for road lighting was, something like 15 metres between columns, we’re on the same here, but back in the mercury and SOX days this was enough for lanterns to spread light between the dark patches, as LED direct light downward the old spacing doesn’t work!, that when lantern choices are important.
We got DW, (distribution wide), Uni-Street fitted, so the dark in between are not an issue.

Danny has highlighted the same problem with the 11watt Axias.

That's what you get when you take lighting engineers out of the picture, and it's purely a budgetary consideration 

That's what you get when you take lighting engineers out of the picture, and it's purely a budgetary consideration 

Yep. They probably picked the HPS lights at whichever’s cheap and put them in front of our house. Too far spread out so it’s bright dark bright dark.

Budgetary decisions and not using lighting engineers would lead to the same horrid underlit or overlit areas regardless of light tech used.