Comment by quietbritishjim

> During a normal night, you get used to the darkness surprisingly fast,

Then a car drives past and your sight instantly adjusts to that, but takes several minutes to adjust back. Then you're stuck in subjective total darkness for a while.

Or, if you're in an area with mixed lighting (e.g. you walk past a house that incidentally lights part of the street) then your eyes can never adjust and you have to walk through pools of total darkness. I know this experience from rare situations where a few streetlights go out in a row, and it's not as easy as you just portrayed it.

> At least that's my experience growing up in the dark countryside in Sweden

That's fair enough IMO. I don't think it's feasible or helpful to plaster every centimetre of every rural road in street lighting. But the comment we're replying to suggested removing them in cities "outside of ... active center areas". That's a different matter.