Comment by jacobolus

The sodium lamps are in fact safer for driving, because they preserve drivers' night vision, which improves visibility into the shadows, and because they cause less glare.

What they aren't good for is LED manufacturers' bottom line, and the lighting industry spent a lot of lobbying money to entice friendly politicians to heavily subsidize them with public infrastructure budgets, with those subsidies then misleadingly sold to the public as "efficient" and "environmentally friendly".

They're also not very good for reading the newspaper or doing critical color analysis. Thankfully such tasks do not need to be done at night in the middle of the street.