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Hello I am a high school student and I am curious about how street light is arranged along the road. Is there government laws to install street light on the road or is the arangement of the street light that is the most efficient to its road? If it is, how are the lights arrangement? Is it by some sort of software?

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    $\begingroup$ You don't say what country you are talking about, but in the UK there are several national standards documents relating to street lighting. BS 5489-1, Code of Practice for the Design of Road Lighting, would be a good starting point. $\endgroup$
    – alephzero
    Aug 22, 2018 at 14:44
  • $\begingroup$ Is this a homework question, because if so we prefer to help only after you've done some research on your own. One hint: it can't be software, since street lights have been in existence for over a hundred years prior to the first mechanical computers. $\endgroup$ Aug 22, 2018 at 17:56
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    $\begingroup$ "it can't be software" Why not? I doesn't make any sense to say "something has been done without computers for hundreds of years, therefore we don't use computers to do it now." $\endgroup$
    – alephzero
    Aug 22, 2018 at 18:35
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    $\begingroup$ It may not necessarily require software, but as an employee of one of the larger lighting manufacturers in North America I can assure you that these days software is certainly used to calculate the optimum placement of street lighting (and other lighting, both indoor and outdoor). When you can feed in the photometric pattern of your luminair with its various lense options, play with mounting heights, etc, etc and see the calculated results all on your PC why would you not do this? $\endgroup$
    – brhans
    Aug 22, 2018 at 19:32
  • $\begingroup$ I aologoze that I did not mention i am a student from south korea and trying to start reseaech on finding optimum solution for finding street light arrangement on complicated roads. i could not find any documents about so i am leaving question. $\endgroup$
    – JSChang
    Aug 23, 2018 at 3:58

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Street lights are installed in order to provide a minimum lighting level along the roadway. Some municipalities or states or countries may have minimum lighting standards, but these often vary depending on the context (i.e. rural, urban, intersections).

For certain situations, such as lighting for mid-block or pedestrian crossings, there may be additional requirements beyond merely lighting level. Putting the lights so they illuminate the front of a pedestrian in a crosswalk provides better visibility than placing the lights overhead or behind the pedestrians, so some newer standards may require lighting be placed accordingly so they are in front of the crosswalk on the approach legs to a crosswalk or intersection.

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