Lighting and pedestrian reassurance at night time

This article presents the first findings of a novel experiment carried out to determine whether the presence of road lighting contributes to pedestrians’ reassurance after dark, with the aim of recording their evaluation without placing emphasis on lightin g. In 130 of the 210 locations discussed in interviews, road lighting was mentioned as a reason for the pre sence or absence of reassurance, a similar frequency to spatial features, less frequent than access to help, but more frequent than familiarity or the presence of threatening other people. These results suggest that road lighting can play an important role in improving reassurance . The method provides more confidence than previous studies because the effect of lighting was not enhanced by obvious cha nges of lighting .