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Are municipalities allowed to simply switch off street lights?

Practice tip ET Light, ELEKTRON AG

In public street lighting today, municipalities and cities are increasingly concerned with reducing light pollution and lowering energy consumption. In order to achieve the efficiency goals, luminaires of a continuous, standard-compliant street lighting are switched off or partly even removed in many places. When operators, such as EW's, implement these measures, ambiguities often arise regarding responsibilities, especially with regard to ensuring safety on the road.

From a legal perspective, the local civil engineering office is responsible for lighting in municipalities, and the cantonal civil engineering office for cantonal roads. In this context, street lighting as part of the road infrastructure is subject to the SN EN 1320 standard provided for this purpose. This standard stipulates that the owner of a road is obliged to carry out all infrastructure constructions in accordance with the standard, while ensuring safe and hazard-free use. In addition, some cantonal road laws list street lighting as a safety component of a road. From these lighting and safety specifications, the candelabra distances can be determined accordingly.

If you now remove a candelabra from a continuous street lighting system, you get uneven lighting that no longer complies with the SN EN 1320 standard. The resulting light and dark zones lead to  serious deterioration of visibility in bad weather conditions for all road users. This increases the risk of accidents, as pedestrians in dark zones may be detected too late, as the motor vehicle driver's eye has to continuously adapt to the new situation. If an accident should occur for this reason, the road owner, the municipality or city, could be held jointly liable according to OR 58 "Works owner liability" (see on OR 58 explanations of the bfu).

Today there are simpler and safer measures to avoid light immissions and save energy. Instead of removing lights, dim them as needed to ensure the necessary safety at all times.

Also published in: ET Light 03-2018

Author: ELEKTRON AG

 

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