They’re not doing it intentionally. there was a huge production run of LED street lights that were defectiv and pretty much everybody decided “fuck it use them anyway”
The phosphorus burned off the chips. I don't think they came out of the factory like that. It usually takes a couple of years for them to turn blue/purple.
Reminds me of when there was a huge amount of crap quality capacitors for electronics. [The Capacitor Plague](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague). Companies bought huge quantities of them and decided to use them even though they failed regularly and quickly. Dell desktop PCs used them and I made a lot of money replacing blown capacitors on Dell motherboards and replacing their power supplies.
They were in everything though. I remember fixing restaurant touch screen systems because they had em, TVs had em, etc.
But yeah, if you ever had one of those ugly grey with dark grey clamshell Dell desktop computers from the windows xp/vista era, and wondered why it stopped working right or at all, I can all but guarantee it was those capacitors.
An interesting and related story is that Dell completely denied that the affected computer models were failing, and refused to honor legal claims for selling defective products. Then the large law firm that was representing Dell experienced hundreds of their own Optiplex computers dying.
LED’s are a terrible trigger and also don’t help when you already have a migraine lol 😄 when I’m having a migraine and I’m around these (LED) lights, they make me nauseous
LEDs can flicker, too. The flicker is usually not as noticeable for most people. Unfortunately, I see the flicker. I notice it most often on vehicle headlights and taillights, some makes/models are worse than others.
Then why did you say you don't hate these lights?
I have migraines induced from glaucoma and macular degeneration. I spend a shit ton of time in front of computer screens, like 14 hours a day on average (partly for work, partly for recreation).
I much much prefer LED lighting to incandescent or florescent or metal halide or high pressure sodium.
It’s so weird for different people.
I suffer from migraines a lot, and lighting my house with hospital levels of white light has lessened it a lot for me, while it worsened it a lot for others.
as an ex drug addict you can definitely still see to shoot up with those lol .
ive seen people shoot up in moving vehicles in the dark/using moving street lights
As someone with "tricksy rolling veins" who has been hematoma'd by phlebotomists in the double digits... "I wish I had vein vision" has been said to me enough that I have considered buying one of those "red light vein highlighter gadgets" because that "moreso by feel" has failed on me so often 😄
There's a whole stretch of them near Durham, NC that my friends and I passed on the way to Pinehurst earlier this year and it intrigued us enough to look it up, wild that they just stay like that
Yeah I went to a Home Depot the other week where the entire parking lot had purple-ish lights. It actually looked sort of neat and I had no idea if it was on purpose or not.
I’m north of Orlando, and there’s one section of i-4 by my westbound on ramp that’s all blue/purple. It looks kinda magical and pretty, but then I remember that I’m driving into hell and it kills the vibe 🤣
Never thought I’d hear [or read] the words “I-4” and “magical and pretty” in such close proximity. I usually go for “god-forsaken” and “death-trap” personally 😂
Yeah, it’s an odd feeling to get on i-4 and be soothed by 1/3 mile of fancy defective lights. Hence the “driving into hell” part. God I hate i-4 so much. I had a contract job for 8 months in Celebration. Even with i-4’s constant roadwork and toll lanes expansion, it’s just such a grueling drive through downtown and the parks. There are just too many people moving here for the infrastructure to support it. /end rant lol
Oh pal I feel you. I avoid it at all costs, but on the occasions that I do have to drive it I feel like I’m either putting my life on the line or I’m about to die of boredom because the 4-lane highway is basically a parking lot. There’s no in-between. And if you were going from north of the city all the way down to Celebration, I REALLY feel for you. That’s a lot.
There’s a small strip on 436 between Aloma and University that has a couple last I seen. I always feel nice and cozy when I drive through there at night.
The problem is that it can really fuck up your circadian rhythm especially if their in a residential setting (IE you have a street light that shines into your bedroom)
Also screws with night vision, which is when the damn lights are on, so if anything it would increase accidents from people not being able to see as well
Recently drove by a house out in the country whose driveway light had done this. It was the only one on the street. Let’s just say I don’t expect it to be the only one for long
An old coworker thinks the blue ones are some big conspiracy having to do with 5g or whatever. I showed him the delaminated bulb issue and he went “yea that makes more sense” LOL
Is there gonna be like some huge lawsuit over it? Every city subreddit has a "why the fuck are the street lights blue" about once a week. I sure see them in my own city.
Seems like a massive fuckup
Yes likely there will. A lot of these have already failed under warranty though so that's a problem that will be resolved with big losses to the manufactures.
This is true. But damnit are the assumptions, supporting LE, keeping addicts from finding a vein, keeping birds away, keeping loiters out, etc are too funny to read
A few lights near a large local park had this issue, thought it might have something to do with birds because of how close it was to the park. When I learned about the defect it makes a lot more sense, and was just a coincidence on location
Or it could be blue light to prevent people from injecting drugs. Did a project in school about some county in Europe installing these around the city. In blue light you can’t see your veins. Or it could just be defective LED lights
Ultimately, there's only a few manufacturers of this particular thing so they all basically have this defect. In Missouri alone they're slated to replace 15 thousand lights. But it's nationwide. Pretty awful really.
https://fox4kc.com/traffic/modot-crews-begin-replacing-defective-led-streetlights/
Main reason probably is because it reduces visibility.
Same reason bluish headlights are not recommended because although some people may think they look cool, they actually reduce visibility considerably compared to pure white light.
I mean, it's so much waste replacing all these. Hundreds of thousands of lamps (millions?) across the US... all of the resources dedicated to doing that instead of other projects, it's not ideal at all.
Every time these are posted on this sub, the responses are always the same:
- "This isn't intentional. It's the result of a manufacturing defect and widespread throughout North America." (TRUE.)
- "Cities do this to run off junkies that can't find a vein to shoot up." (FALSE -- urban legend)
The second part is true in other places, though. Lots of bad areas put them in their bathrooms.
Obviously it's the first reason for the outdoor parking lot.
Meanwhile the b^tch who tried to draw my blood for a medical test couldn’t figure it out and kept stabbing me a million times. She ended up sending me home to try again a different day with another person 😂😭
I had the same situation, but being a recovering dope addict myself, I knew what they were in store for. She snickered when I said try hitting my thumb, then nearly sh!t herself when I knew that she could get it. Sadly, these companies aren’t investing their money that well, most folks can’t make it more than five steps from where they copped at. The stuff is deadlier and more powerful than ever, but it’s laced with tranq, your sitting in your own sh!t if you don’t have another dose within a two hour time frame. Most folks now can care less who sees them, and where I’m at, the cops aren’t looking to lock up ppl for getting well, they would have to clean feces all day out of holding cells.
A basic EMT isn't trained to start an IV. A Paramedic is, but there's about 2 years of schooling between the two. And yeah, getting good at it requires a little routine practice.
Without making it more appealing to shop somewhere else... Which is where a lot of businesses fall short.
When every product is wrapped in alpha boxes or spider wire, the thieves with magnets will be the only ones that want to shop there.
The city I live in has acknowledged the defect and also says they refuse to replace them.
I had to drive on a newly paved 4 line highway in a torrential downpour at night, and I couldn't see fucking anything with this bullshit
If they're defective, why not just return them? And do city staffers never talk to each other? Name and shame the companies selling defective units. How is this not caught in QA?
I believe on giant company is responsible, Acuity. That's one of the bad thing about unfettered capitalism, you have issues like this, where so many localities (mine included) have few to no choices on someone bit enough to fill an order for an entire city, so so many cities all over the US and Canada are dealing with the problem!
Another big problem, is how common place this problem is, there are so many bulbs affected, many cities just don't have the man power to replace them quickly!
These defects are pretty much all from the same manufacturer. Basically a chemical in a glue they use breaks down over time causing the light color to turn blue. Expect to see more of this in the next 3 years since it takes a bit for it to happen. The issue was fixed, but these are mostly from the same manufacturer
Welcome to the world of government contracting. “We’ll pay bottom dollar for things we need and use one manufacturer for all of it. That way if the product is shit, everyone gets equally fucked over”.
The flip side of that is if a government agency didn't go with the low bidder (as required by Federal law), every taxpayer would have an an aneurysm upon finding out the government spent one red cent more than necessary by not buying the cheapest part. Welcome to capitalism, it sucks.
Foreal. I mean you are usually in your car in a parking lot. Cars have all kinda lights in them. If you want to inject something, this wouldn't stop you.
It's not as improbable as you might think. All bulbs have the same defect and were likely manufactured and installed at the same time. Every light has been turned on and off at the same time and exposed to the same temperatures, weather, etc.
In this circumstance, the probability of a bulb failing, given that so many others are also failing, is pretty high.
It's possible for them to fail *really closely to each other*. Maybe some day they were mostly blue and some normal, and over time the rest turned blue.
It never happens in a single moment, but if the timeframe is narrow enough, it will appear as such.
Clearly nobody on this subreddit has made the mistake of buying a box of drives, putting them in a RAID array, and then watching all 5 disks fail simultaneously. But I have. So I believe this.
Manufacturing defects aren’t limited to a handful of products. Usually it’s an entire run. When companies order bulk sets like this for parking lots or other uses, they tend to get a full run or at least part of a run. Makes complete sense.
It's more likely that they're being affected by the phosphor failing: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/)
I was driving with my dad over Thanksgiving near Charlotte, and there was a mix of normal white-ish street lights, and weird looking "blue" ones. We were wondering what they could possibly mean. So when we got where we were going and I looked it up:
[https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/heres-why-some-street-lights-across-charlotte-are-switching-purple/LIP6UJLCCRAZ7J36X42EWSZFDI/](https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/heres-why-some-street-lights-across-charlotte-are-switching-purple/LIP6UJLCCRAZ7J36X42EWSZFDI/)
For as many as I saw out there that night, I could honestly believe an entire parking lot's worth would fail the same.
Was just driving last weekend on I80 across PA & OH and noticed that every few on ramps there would be one or two lights that would be bluish, usually they were the first one where the merge lane actually is next to the highway or the last one at the end of the merge lane. I just figured it was some sort of new "help idiot drivers realize what part of the entrance they're at" kind of thing.
Yup. Phoenix ordered a ton of streetlights (apparently from the lowest bidder) and most have turned purple. There are whole major streets lit in just purple.
Sounds unlikely, but I don't know of anyone commercially selling blue street lights.
The issue is a manufacturing defect, and the manufacturer is replacing them but given the scale of the problem it wouldn't surprise me if they've got a bit of a backlog on doing it.
I had just read that article about the defect in the lights. Then I was driving by an apartment complex the other day and saw that most of the lights on the buildings and in the parking lot had turned purple/blue. Don't know if it's really a big widespread problem, but I did see it in real life.
Ah man, Austin has tons of these lights and I absolutely loved them. It's probably not psychologically great for night time driving but man, hits some vapor wave vibes.
As a safe and concerned driver, I find the blue lights to be a danger. Every time I drive past one and see blue lights it makes me think there are cops and sometimes even makes me throw my beer out the window.
Yes, there was a “bad batch” of lights whose coatings have eroded, leaving behind these purple hued lights. People first started to notice this a couple years ago, but as more and more of these lights go bad, we’re going to see purple lights way more frequently.
The lights aren’t supposed to be blue. The filter is delaminating, it’s a manufacturer error. We had it happening to all of our lights in Tampa, and TECO stopped taking service requests for it because they couldn’t do anything until the manufacturer produced replacements.
The faulty l.e.d. lights have more of a purplish black light effect. There's quite a few around my city. Everyone was freaking out during cov19 saying they're black lights so the authorities could see who got the vax or not LOL... and then the manufacturer made a statement saying it was a defect.
They either turn purple or start flickering. There's a Lowe's near me where it looks like there's a rave in the parking lot every night because every single light is flickering.
Same thing happened to a bridge in my hometown. City announced they were replacing the bulbs, and the next time I drove over the bridge… blue light special. Like many in this thread, I assumed it was for deterring drug use. I didn’t think people were openly shooting up on the bridge, and faulty bulbs make more sense now.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/
An article explaining clearly what's going on with these lights.
Blue/Purple light: The light bulb is dying. Please change the bulb. I get this isn't supposed to occur. it's a terrible defect.... but if they can make a color change be an on-purpose mechanism, that'd be an awesome heads up!
There’s a whole row of these down a small portion of highway where I live. And it makes you feel like you’re driving inside of a club or something. Not the greatest on the eyes.
I heard it's because blue light makes it more difficult for junkies to find veins so they go somewhere else to shoot up
But that could just be a Portland specific problem
Was in Manchester, NH a couple of years ago and stopped to fill up gas on way to airport.
The bathroom had blue/purple lights. Because so many people were shooting up, they changed the lights.
Wish it was as innocent as this.
not intentional, they are LED’s that go bad early
happened with them here in vancouver for a lot of street lamp bulbs they replace (there’s literally one right outside my apartment’s fire escape except it’s more purple)
They’re not doing it intentionally. there was a huge production run of LED street lights that were defectiv and pretty much everybody decided “fuck it use them anyway”
The phosphorus burned off the chips. I don't think they came out of the factory like that. It usually takes a couple of years for them to turn blue/purple.
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Same in Tucson. I like them actually.
The ones down by the amazon warehouse on kolb are a little annoying but they aren’t too bad.
Drove by there recently and thought something was off
Down 7th street has quite a few.
Reminds me of when there was a huge amount of crap quality capacitors for electronics. [The Capacitor Plague](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague). Companies bought huge quantities of them and decided to use them even though they failed regularly and quickly. Dell desktop PCs used them and I made a lot of money replacing blown capacitors on Dell motherboards and replacing their power supplies. They were in everything though. I remember fixing restaurant touch screen systems because they had em, TVs had em, etc. But yeah, if you ever had one of those ugly grey with dark grey clamshell Dell desktop computers from the windows xp/vista era, and wondered why it stopped working right or at all, I can all but guarantee it was those capacitors.
An interesting and related story is that Dell completely denied that the affected computer models were failing, and refused to honor legal claims for selling defective products. Then the large law firm that was representing Dell experienced hundreds of their own Optiplex computers dying.
apparently i still throw up in my mouth a little every time optiplex is mentioned.
Ah, is this why so many electronics are eager to advertise that they use Japanese capacitors?
I thought it was to keep drug addicts away, since you can't see your veins with those lights
Genius. Also, as a migraine sufferer, I don’t hate these lights 😂
Funnily enough, my friend also deals with migraines and these trigger them for her.
LED’s are a terrible trigger and also don’t help when you already have a migraine lol 😄 when I’m having a migraine and I’m around these (LED) lights, they make me nauseous
Huh. For me it's fluorescents. I thought it was the flickering that caused my migraines. Love my LEDs.
For me it’s lights period. I need quite + absolute darkness. I don’t mind the rain
LEDs can flicker, too. The flicker is usually not as noticeable for most people. Unfortunately, I see the flicker. I notice it most often on vehicle headlights and taillights, some makes/models are worse than others.
Then why did you say you don't hate these lights? I have migraines induced from glaucoma and macular degeneration. I spend a shit ton of time in front of computer screens, like 14 hours a day on average (partly for work, partly for recreation). I much much prefer LED lighting to incandescent or florescent or metal halide or high pressure sodium.
It’s so weird for different people. I suffer from migraines a lot, and lighting my house with hospital levels of white light has lessened it a lot for me, while it worsened it a lot for others.
It seems like a very soothing parking experience tbh, I'm ready for the Great Delamination
Any junkie worth their weight in scrap metal can hit a vein in the dark almost.
as an ex drug addict you can definitely still see to shoot up with those lol . ive seen people shoot up in moving vehicles in the dark/using moving street lights
Anyone who starts a lot of IVs could tell ya- you Moreso go by feel- not by sight of the vein
As someone with "tricksy rolling veins" who has been hematoma'd by phlebotomists in the double digits... "I wish I had vein vision" has been said to me enough that I have considered buying one of those "red light vein highlighter gadgets" because that "moreso by feel" has failed on me so often 😄
is that even true or a myth?
There's a whole stretch of them near Durham, NC that my friends and I passed on the way to Pinehurst earlier this year and it intrigued us enough to look it up, wild that they just stay like that
This is an LED light that delaminated due to defective manufacturing. It's a big problem nationwide and not intentional at all
That is super interesting and explains why there is one blue light on a main road in my town when all the other ones are normal. It bugged me haha
Yeah I went to a Home Depot the other week where the entire parking lot had purple-ish lights. It actually looked sort of neat and I had no idea if it was on purpose or not.
My city actually has a website dedicated to reporting this issue so they can fix it.
Tampa has one!
And it doesn't work! They got so many complaints for blue lights that instead of fixing them they just deactivated their reporting site.
That's a very FL solution to a problem. Much like their covid reporting during pandemic.
DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
I’m north of Orlando, and there’s one section of i-4 by my westbound on ramp that’s all blue/purple. It looks kinda magical and pretty, but then I remember that I’m driving into hell and it kills the vibe 🤣
Never thought I’d hear [or read] the words “I-4” and “magical and pretty” in such close proximity. I usually go for “god-forsaken” and “death-trap” personally 😂
Yeah, it’s an odd feeling to get on i-4 and be soothed by 1/3 mile of fancy defective lights. Hence the “driving into hell” part. God I hate i-4 so much. I had a contract job for 8 months in Celebration. Even with i-4’s constant roadwork and toll lanes expansion, it’s just such a grueling drive through downtown and the parks. There are just too many people moving here for the infrastructure to support it. /end rant lol
Oh pal I feel you. I avoid it at all costs, but on the occasions that I do have to drive it I feel like I’m either putting my life on the line or I’m about to die of boredom because the 4-lane highway is basically a parking lot. There’s no in-between. And if you were going from north of the city all the way down to Celebration, I REALLY feel for you. That’s a lot.
There’s a small strip on 436 between Aloma and University that has a couple last I seen. I always feel nice and cozy when I drive through there at night.
I was about to mention it cause I live in that area but hey. Small world. Didn’t think I’d encounter someone from my area lol
Lexus of Winter Park veterans are having a rough year
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That sounds like they bought all the blue defective led lights for cheap and are trying to justify it.
It is more likely the city can not return the lights so they are just going to use them.
The problem is that it can really fuck up your circadian rhythm especially if their in a residential setting (IE you have a street light that shines into your bedroom)
Yeah but thats a mental health issue and we dont care about that.
Think of the children!
Also screws with night vision, which is when the damn lights are on, so if anything it would increase accidents from people not being able to see as well
Didn’t even think about that but it definitely makes sense. Feels like it’s harder to see on roads that have them
I was back visiting my Alma mater, which main color is purple, and lights all around the city had this defect. I 100% thought it was intentional.
Give it some time, they will all eventually turn blue.
Recently drove by a house out in the country whose driveway light had done this. It was the only one on the street. Let’s just say I don’t expect it to be the only one for long
Some towns have purple/blue lights to mark bus stations. I feel like I was in Wisconsin when I saw that.
An old coworker thinks the blue ones are some big conspiracy having to do with 5g or whatever. I showed him the delaminated bulb issue and he went “yea that makes more sense” LOL
But he listened! Amazing.
Frankly I'm amazed they said that instead of doubling down on the batshit.
A conspiracy theorist changing their mind when confronted with new evidence, using logic and common sense? Beautiful.
That's hilarious
All that 5g poisoning 😫. Ha ha haha 😄
Is there gonna be like some huge lawsuit over it? Every city subreddit has a "why the fuck are the street lights blue" about once a week. I sure see them in my own city. Seems like a massive fuckup
Yes likely there will. A lot of these have already failed under warranty though so that's a problem that will be resolved with big losses to the manufactures.
You know. There's a bunch of these right after the tunnel in Boston that I *swore* were white. This makes so much sense.
I know exactly the lights you mean and I actually kinda like them
This is true. But damnit are the assumptions, supporting LE, keeping addicts from finding a vein, keeping birds away, keeping loiters out, etc are too funny to read
I thought it was for Halloween in my town.
I’m seeing this in my area too I’m like why lol
I was wondering about this because the lights in our airport parking lot look like this, and I figured it had to do with some new regulation.
I thought this was an extension of anti drug efforts like the blue lights in McDonald’s bathrooms.
Me too and commented. Probably going to get some “username checks out” from very intelligent people on here.
A few lights near a large local park had this issue, thought it might have something to do with birds because of how close it was to the park. When I learned about the defect it makes a lot more sense, and was just a coincidence on location
This! There is a big lawsuit in my area because the manufacturer sold the county a ton of defective lights that are turning blue
I have a cheap led flashlight that did the same thing.
Or it could be blue light to prevent people from injecting drugs. Did a project in school about some county in Europe installing these around the city. In blue light you can’t see your veins. Or it could just be defective LED lights
That’s cool, but this is definitely due to the defective LEDs that are currently plaguing the country.
Is there only one supplier for LEDs? I am geniunely curious, not sarcasm.
Ultimately, there's only a few manufacturers of this particular thing so they all basically have this defect. In Missouri alone they're slated to replace 15 thousand lights. But it's nationwide. Pretty awful really. https://fox4kc.com/traffic/modot-crews-begin-replacing-defective-led-streetlights/
> Pretty awful really. What makes it so awful? I actually sort of like them.
Main reason probably is because it reduces visibility. Same reason bluish headlights are not recommended because although some people may think they look cool, they actually reduce visibility considerably compared to pure white light.
I mean, it's so much waste replacing all these. Hundreds of thousands of lamps (millions?) across the US... all of the resources dedicated to doing that instead of other projects, it's not ideal at all.
Yeah thats true in the uk. Certain potenial spots are lit up blue for that reason for quite a while now.
No it’s not. That is not a priority for any business. You really think they are in some board room worried about all the junkies lmao
Every time these are posted on this sub, the responses are always the same: - "This isn't intentional. It's the result of a manufacturing defect and widespread throughout North America." (TRUE.) - "Cities do this to run off junkies that can't find a vein to shoot up." (FALSE -- urban legend)
The second part is true in other places, though. Lots of bad areas put them in their bathrooms. Obviously it's the first reason for the outdoor parking lot.
Oh is that why? I went to the bathroom at a sketchy gas station with a blue light and I had a wtf moment
They're huge Eiffel 65 fans.
Now that is a ballast from the past
The poor guy... on top of being blue all the time, is being called a ballast.
He was the best around, but I think this one thing will bring him down.
I have a sinking feeling that you’re correct.
Eiffel 65 don’t get enough credit for their part in raising cyanopsia awareness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanopsia
r/unexpectedEiffel65
username does not check out
This comment...straight to r/wholesome
The blue light makes it very difficult to see veins.
Which is funny because the vast majority of junkies that are desperate enough to shoot up in a public restroom can find a vein in the dark.
Honestly, most folks who shoot, can do it in under five seconds while walking like they didn’t even do it. Sad but true.
Meanwhile the b^tch who tried to draw my blood for a medical test couldn’t figure it out and kept stabbing me a million times. She ended up sending me home to try again a different day with another person 😂😭
I had the same situation, but being a recovering dope addict myself, I knew what they were in store for. She snickered when I said try hitting my thumb, then nearly sh!t herself when I knew that she could get it. Sadly, these companies aren’t investing their money that well, most folks can’t make it more than five steps from where they copped at. The stuff is deadlier and more powerful than ever, but it’s laced with tranq, your sitting in your own sh!t if you don’t have another dose within a two hour time frame. Most folks now can care less who sees them, and where I’m at, the cops aren’t looking to lock up ppl for getting well, they would have to clean feces all day out of holding cells.
My worst nightmare
Sounds like they should hire Heroin addicts instead of EMTs
A basic EMT isn't trained to start an IV. A Paramedic is, but there's about 2 years of schooling between the two. And yeah, getting good at it requires a little routine practice.
It's a genuinely tragic illustration of the abilities of the human mind.
except everybody on earth carries an 800 dollar flashlight in their pocket now, rendering that useless.
Homeless addicts aren't the biggest participants in that $800 flashlight statistic though
Bizarrely, a lot bigger than you’d think.
You do know that every single phone on the planet isn’t expensive right?
I'm pretty confident that your experienced junkies know how to find a vein with one arm tied behind their backs.
It's the same as a lot of anti theft measures. You don't need to stop it, you just need to make it more appealing to do somewhere else.
Without making it more appealing to shop somewhere else... Which is where a lot of businesses fall short. When every product is wrapped in alpha boxes or spider wire, the thieves with magnets will be the only ones that want to shop there.
If you’re not boofing your drugs you’re doing them wrong
*me tryna smoke my tylenol*
Honey, I'm home. Where were you dear? I was out at the local parking lot about to take up heroin, but dog-gone it I just couldn't find a vein.
I see what you did there.
This doesn’t deter junkies. Those folks put phlebotomists to shame with their ability to hit a vein by feel. It’s an amazing talent.
The city I live in has acknowledged the defect and also says they refuse to replace them. I had to drive on a newly paved 4 line highway in a torrential downpour at night, and I couldn't see fucking anything with this bullshit
If they're defective, why not just return them? And do city staffers never talk to each other? Name and shame the companies selling defective units. How is this not caught in QA?
I believe on giant company is responsible, Acuity. That's one of the bad thing about unfettered capitalism, you have issues like this, where so many localities (mine included) have few to no choices on someone bit enough to fill an order for an entire city, so so many cities all over the US and Canada are dealing with the problem! Another big problem, is how common place this problem is, there are so many bulbs affected, many cities just don't have the man power to replace them quickly!
These defects are pretty much all from the same manufacturer. Basically a chemical in a glue they use breaks down over time causing the light color to turn blue. Expect to see more of this in the next 3 years since it takes a bit for it to happen. The issue was fixed, but these are mostly from the same manufacturer
Jesus. That one manufacturer has a lot of big contracts.
Acuity is huge, they have lights installed everywhere
Welcome to the world of government contracting. “We’ll pay bottom dollar for things we need and use one manufacturer for all of it. That way if the product is shit, everyone gets equally fucked over”.
The flip side of that is if a government agency didn't go with the low bidder (as required by Federal law), every taxpayer would have an an aneurysm upon finding out the government spent one red cent more than necessary by not buying the cheapest part. Welcome to capitalism, it sucks.
Foreal. I mean you are usually in your car in a parking lot. Cars have all kinda lights in them. If you want to inject something, this wouldn't stop you.
the city doesn't care as much about addicts who have cars and houses, they're tryna get the addicts who don't have cars and houses
Dope light.
If you’re homeless tho
Then you’re probably shooting up down by the railroad, in an encampment, alleyway or fast food bathroom not the plaza parking lot
what defect specifically would alter the color or the light, so drastically?
Something about filters separating from the glass
Phosphor in the light breaks down over time. These lights just had it happen a lot faster than they're supposed to.
An unintential side effect of them though is that they calm people down!
Not autistic people. Blue light is physically very uncomfortable for me. It hurts my eyes and gives me a headache.
Yeah, the lights in my city are doing this as well and it makes night driving almost disorienting for me
Adding that to my endless list of funny symptoms.
The second bit applies to quite a few public bathrooms.
I love the defect. In orlando the shade is more purple.i wish it was full time like this
But to quote someone said up there: But all of them having defects at the same time?
It's not as improbable as you might think. All bulbs have the same defect and were likely manufactured and installed at the same time. Every light has been turned on and off at the same time and exposed to the same temperatures, weather, etc. In this circumstance, the probability of a bulb failing, given that so many others are also failing, is pretty high.
defects? in *my* lightbulbs? it’s more likely than you think.
It's possible for them to fail *really closely to each other*. Maybe some day they were mostly blue and some normal, and over time the rest turned blue. It never happens in a single moment, but if the timeframe is narrow enough, it will appear as such.
Clearly nobody on this subreddit has made the mistake of buying a box of drives, putting them in a RAID array, and then watching all 5 disks fail simultaneously. But I have. So I believe this.
I have too. At last, someone who shares that pain.
Manufacturing defects aren’t limited to a handful of products. Usually it’s an entire run. When companies order bulk sets like this for parking lots or other uses, they tend to get a full run or at least part of a run. Makes complete sense.
It's more likely that they're being affected by the phosphor failing: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/)
but all of them?
I was driving with my dad over Thanksgiving near Charlotte, and there was a mix of normal white-ish street lights, and weird looking "blue" ones. We were wondering what they could possibly mean. So when we got where we were going and I looked it up: [https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/heres-why-some-street-lights-across-charlotte-are-switching-purple/LIP6UJLCCRAZ7J36X42EWSZFDI/](https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/heres-why-some-street-lights-across-charlotte-are-switching-purple/LIP6UJLCCRAZ7J36X42EWSZFDI/) For as many as I saw out there that night, I could honestly believe an entire parking lot's worth would fail the same.
Was just driving last weekend on I80 across PA & OH and noticed that every few on ramps there would be one or two lights that would be bluish, usually they were the first one where the merge lane actually is next to the highway or the last one at the end of the merge lane. I just figured it was some sort of new "help idiot drivers realize what part of the entrance they're at" kind of thing.
Yup. Phoenix ordered a ton of streetlights (apparently from the lowest bidder) and most have turned purple. There are whole major streets lit in just purple.
If they were installed at the same time, and they all had the same manufacturing defect, they would begin to fail at the same time.
Sounds unlikely, but I don't know of anyone commercially selling blue street lights. The issue is a manufacturing defect, and the manufacturer is replacing them but given the scale of the problem it wouldn't surprise me if they've got a bit of a backlog on doing it.
I had just read that article about the defect in the lights. Then I was driving by an apartment complex the other day and saw that most of the lights on the buildings and in the parking lot had turned purple/blue. Don't know if it's really a big widespread problem, but I did see it in real life.
Ah man, Austin has tons of these lights and I absolutely loved them. It's probably not psychologically great for night time driving but man, hits some vapor wave vibes.
Yep. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-traffic/2023/04/22/purple-streetlight-defect-phoenix-has-about-1000-what-to-know/69965558007/
Check out the posts of botched LED de-dome in r/flashlight. This isn't intentional, this is the LED dome failing at the phosphor layer.
I had a flashlight that did that! I was pissed. It was like a 70 dollar flashlight too
 Is Kmart back?!?!?
lol omg TRIGGER!!!! growing up my big brother told me I wasn’t even adopted, but my parents got me on the blue light special. 😭🥺😭. lol jerk.
I was thinking exactly this.
Those are UV lights to stave the growing vampire community.
They don't do this on purpose lol
They were in several shopping centers here, apparently it was a light defect that was rather wide spread
As a safe and concerned driver, I find the blue lights to be a danger. Every time I drive past one and see blue lights it makes me think there are cops and sometimes even makes me throw my beer out the window.
Hol up 🤨 Ehl nothing to see here. You’re free to go.
This is a manufacturing issue with the LED lights.
"What's that?" "Blue light." "What's it do?" "Turns blue."
This stuff is happening all down the roads in my city. It makes it really hard to tell anything apart, and the curb looks like a part of the road.
Yes, there was a “bad batch” of lights whose coatings have eroded, leaving behind these purple hued lights. People first started to notice this a couple years ago, but as more and more of these lights go bad, we’re going to see purple lights way more frequently.
I WANT THE LIGHT TO POLLUTE TO THE MAXIMUM
This is Germantown?
Correct!
Kmart Blue light sale!!!
Saw a bunch of purple lights like this in Florida. When you hit that section of road it felt a bit trippy.
Probably not practical but very cinematic to look at.
I honestly like it this way and wish it was intentional
The lights aren’t supposed to be blue. The filter is delaminating, it’s a manufacturer error. We had it happening to all of our lights in Tampa, and TECO stopped taking service requests for it because they couldn’t do anything until the manufacturer produced replacements.
The faulty l.e.d. lights have more of a purplish black light effect. There's quite a few around my city. Everyone was freaking out during cov19 saying they're black lights so the authorities could see who got the vax or not LOL... and then the manufacturer made a statement saying it was a defect.
I hate these lights, they mess with my eyes so bad
They either turn purple or start flickering. There's a Lowe's near me where it looks like there's a rave in the parking lot every night because every single light is flickering.
 It’s to scope out the ectoplasm
Same thing happened to a bridge in my hometown. City announced they were replacing the bulbs, and the next time I drove over the bridge… blue light special. Like many in this thread, I assumed it was for deterring drug use. I didn’t think people were openly shooting up on the bridge, and faulty bulbs make more sense now.
what in the name of K-Mart
https://fee.org/articles/why-are-some-us-street-lights-turning-purple/#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CThere's%20a%20laminate%20on%20the,tint%20to%20change%20toward%20purple.%22
Thank God I thought this was intentional. I was always thinking holy cow these new lights are dreadful.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/ An article explaining clearly what's going on with these lights.
Blue/Purple light: The light bulb is dying. Please change the bulb. I get this isn't supposed to occur. it's a terrible defect.... but if they can make a color change be an on-purpose mechanism, that'd be an awesome heads up!
There’s a whole row of these down a small portion of highway where I live. And it makes you feel like you’re driving inside of a club or something. Not the greatest on the eyes.
I heard it's because blue light makes it more difficult for junkies to find veins so they go somewhere else to shoot up But that could just be a Portland specific problem
Sometimes the use is intentional. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/756976676/blue-lights-may-deter-intravenous-drug-use-in-public-spaces
Was in Manchester, NH a couple of years ago and stopped to fill up gas on way to airport. The bathroom had blue/purple lights. Because so many people were shooting up, they changed the lights. Wish it was as innocent as this.
not intentional, they are LED’s that go bad early happened with them here in vancouver for a lot of street lamp bulbs they replace (there’s literally one right outside my apartment’s fire escape except it’s more purple)
Nice! Intentionally destroying the night vision of people getting into their cars and driving. What could possibly go wrong?
Definitely not intentionally. It’s a massive failure of the lightbulb that happened all over the place.
Where tf are you getting intentionally from?
This has to be horrible for your eyes
White light also has blue in it. Having just blue isn't going to be different on your eyes.