Everyone says it: it's obvious that turning on the lights at night is a source of safety.
Everyone, that is, except the statistics!
Let's take a trip into the land of preconceived ideas and popular beliefs: what's really going on?
safety :
insecurity :
It all starts in childhood, and is intrinsic to our evolution: from the age of 1, we begin to experience night terrors, which are unconscious and due to the establishment of biological rhythms. It's especially terrifying for parents, because the child won't remember it when he wakes up. The sleep phase is deep sleep.
Then, around age 2, the nightmares begin. These are in a conscious phase: “REM” sleep. That's why it's possible to remember them after waking up.
Since both phenomena occur during sleep, generally at night, the association “night = nightmare” becomes obvious. Adults speak of “night terrors”. The machine is up and running.
After this fine start, let's add children's stories and legends.
Games, fairy tales and legends all play their part.
It's a good time to let the imagination run wild. Often in connection with scary stories and crimes.
Let's remember an obvious but totally overlooked detail: human eyes are optimized for daylight vision. At night, in low light, they are very inefficient. Another sense then takes over: hearing.
We observe a phenomenon known as hyperacoustics. Unaccustomed to using our ears, the slightest noise is perceived as strange and alarming.
TV and cinema do nothing to help matters. The master of suspense, Alfred Hitchkock, made great use of dark scenes, in the dark and at night. Precisely to let the imagination do the work!
The film "noir" genre took off thanks to him.
In terms of culture and language, there are some interesting details. The Latin word “obscurus” means “towards the shadows”. This word has evolved in many ways. For example:
The two terms are etymologically close, and clearly show the association between the absence of light and fear and the unknown.
We're also familiar with the terms “black magic” or “black masses”, in reference to malicious practices against people. Again, in the collective unconscious, the association between darkness and danger is realized. It's a very ethnocentric and mostly false point of view.
And in those dark times, when black magic was at work, it was not until the Enlightenment century that knowledge advanced, and the unknown receded. We still see a name that uses the notion of darkness and light in a figurative sense, but one that remains ingrained in everyone's mind.
The link between the absence of light and action
Burglaries happen at night. I know someone who was asleep when the burglars broke into his house!
Well... no. It's one example, which will induce a feeling, but certainly not a statistic.
Let's talk statistics.
64% of violent thefts are committed during the day, 36% at night.
74% of non-violent thefts are committed during the day, 23% at night.
Studies show that the majority of burglaries take place during the day. The reason for this is simple: burglars generally act only when the house is empty.
source : Verisure
These are the times when you leave for work, when you pick up your children from school - in short, when you're away.
During the day, from 6am to 6pm: 87%, at night : 13%.
Source : French Ministry of the Interior
Beyond its traffic benefits, visibility is a tool of social control, and the act of lighting the city a police measure that secures people and property at night.
It's undeniable that urban lighting plays a significant role in ensuring the safety of people, traffic and property in the city at night.
That it contributes to the feeling of safety among many users of night-time spaces, and thus enables greater investment in urban public spaces, is understandable.
However, the links between night and insecurity, light and safety, are not so simple and certainly not mechanical.
To illustrate the complexity of these links, I'll draw on feminist-inspired work that takes a gendered approach to this issue, revealing the sociosexual divisions that run through the nighttime space and place it in tension.
Let's not aim for exhaustiveness, but refer to the research of Stéphanie Condon, Marylène Lieber and Florence Maillochon, who remind us that the constraints imposed on women by the male monopoly of public spaces also have their temporal dimensions.
What I find particularly interesting here is that their analysis of the National Survey on Violence against Women in France underlines that “certain apprehensions remain out in the open”:
While a small majority of the women surveyed (between 45% and 55%) are not frightened by the idea of going out alone, a sizeable proportion do express concern about travelling, particularly at night.
For even more of them, going out alone at this time means choosing routes and neighborhoods to cross.
Clearly, it's at night that people are most afraid of going out, whatever the location.
And yet, certain spaces evoke dangers at any time of day: for example, almost one woman in five avoids going to a place where there is little traffic.
While a link between “the night” and women's spatial practices has been clearly established, the question of darkness does not seem to be so significant in the face of the effects of the social - and therefore constructed - dimension of the night:
It's night that evokes all the dangers, the time of day when a woman shouldn't be out alone.
If being in a poorly-lit place can be a source of anxiety, it is also suggested that there may be a time of day beyond which it is inadvisable - or frowned upon - to be out alone.
Hille Koskella has studied women's feelings of insecurity in the city of Helsinki, where summer nights are bright while winter days are dark and short.
It turns out that Finnish women make no difference in terms of danger between winter and summer nights.
So it's not the lack of light that keeps women on their toes, but the social dimension of the night.
And yet, the force of habit continues to make this safety issue one of the primary arguments put forward in favor of the deployment of public lighting.
Extract from “Samuel Chaléat – Sauver la nuit”, p121-122
