Why do street lights go out when you walk by them? for Questionland Seattle

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Why do street lights go out when you walk by them?

A lot of times when I walk down the street the light goes out when i get near it. This is creepy. But why do streetlights go out at all? And how do they come back on 10 minutes later?

Jakey Riotllama asked in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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Most likely it is "confirmation bias" combined with the fact that streetlights often go on and off by themselves for various reasons.

Confirmation bias causes you to remember all the time that you walked by a street light and it shut off, but you forget the other 100 times you walked by a street light and it didn't go off. Once you believe you may have caused the light to go off you begin to take notice every time it happens, each time confirms your belief, but you don't notice all the times it doesn't happen and so your belief is not changed by the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is one of the reasons we have studies and statistical analysis and don't rely on anecdote for scientific evidence.

boxofbirds answered in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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THANK YOU for asking this. I don't know the answer but I've always wondered it myself. Creepy as fuck.

RM answered in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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For many years I half-believed I had this power. I even kept a running count; I was well over 75 lights extinguished. I half-believed that I was cursed by the time I was drunk and disorderly in a public street, and found a big 'ol car muffler lying in the middle of 45th, at about Brooklyn. I ran out and picked it up and swung mightily, and cracked it into a streetlight pole. Boom, the light went out. That's when it started -- subdivine retribution. Now I think it's silly.

Near our house there's a streetlight that catches the lights of car headlights coming up the hill at night, which puts the light out for a minute or two until the solenoid resets. It's really annoying.

Fnarf answered in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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The lightbulbs in streetlights, when they're reaching the end of their lifespans, cycle on and off repeatedly throughout the night. This can go on for weeks before it finally burns out entirely.

All the lightpoles in Seattle have ID tags on them. You can plug that code into a form on City Light's website and it will be added to their queue to be replaced.

Despite knowing all that, I still like to believe that it's me that's making them turn off :)

organizedlightning answered in City Living over 2 years ago | Report

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I really am in love with this question. But has anyone has the opposite happen? I've had them come ON when I walk by.

Raya answered in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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Excellent question. I've noticed that too, and I think it's usually on lights with a bad ballast.

In street lights, the ballast is a magnetic device. I suspect that you walking or driving by can change the electromagnetic field around the light enough that it temporarily stops working. Another possibility is that vibration causes an already flaky device to shut off, though this doesn't seem too likely for someone walking.

Yet another possibility is that walking by triggers the ambient light sensor which turns the light on/off. I doubt this is the cause, because, as you mentioned, the lights seem to turn on about 10 minutes later, and not as soon as you pass by.

So, I'm going to go with the change in electromagnetic field as my best guess. If the ballast is bad, then it might just take 10 minutes to turn back on again (just like a bad florescent bulb in a building).

Mahtli69 answered in City Living over 3 years ago | Report

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