Bedford Driving Lessons

Street and motorway lights should be dimmed or switched off to save energy and let people see the stars, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says. It says there is little evidence that such lighting significantly cuts accidents or crime. It recommends the removal of thousands of motorway lights, possibly even at junctions. Its report, Artificial Light in the Environment, also calls on councils to consider reducing street lighting. The report says that since 1993 most of the UK has become brighter, obscuring the stars, and it backs a recent paper in the scientific journal Nature that said: “Without a direct view of the stars, mankind is cut off from most of the Universe, deprived of any direct sense of its huge scale and our tiny place in it.” The commission proposes “dark- sky parks” all over Britain, with planning restrictions on outdoor lighting. The Galloway Forest Park in southern Scotland this month became Britain’s first official dark-sky park, with 7,000 stars visible there, compared with 500 in Glasgow. More