When it comes to self-driving cars, the conversation usually revolves around a few central points, including more safety, less traffic, and more freedom for people with disabilities. But there’s one potential outcome of autonomous driving that’s often overlooked: less light pollution. According to researchers, street and parking lot lighting accounts for some 90% of outdoor illumination in the industrialized world. Roughly 2% of all energy used in the European Union goes into streetlights; globally that figure is about 1.6%, and headlights consume about 3% of vehicular fuel. That’s a lot of energy—and, as far as streetlights go, much of it is wasted. It’s energy literally beamed into the night sky, in the process obscuring our view of the universe and wreaking biological havoc: luring insects to their doom, disorienting turtles and frogs and salamanders, messing with the metabolisms of birds—and people—exposed to their constant glare, and so on. Given that human drivers need light to see, all this is understandable if regrettable. Still, if automated eyes don’t need artificial illumination to navigate, how much of that light might be dimmed? That’s what researchers, engineers, and urban developers are asking as we inch closer to a future driven by self-driving cars. Sure, the complications of reducing the glare of streetlights are plentiful, but the benefits are too: reducing energy costs, seeing the Milky Way, killing fewer migratory birds, and mitigating the human health effects of circadian rhythm-disrupting light are just a few potential benefits of reducing light pollution.
Light pollution is wreaking biological havoc. Self-driving cars can change that
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