Fading Light
A Local Authority has been urged by a Coroner to review its
policy of switching off street lights in the middle of the night to
save money, after he concluded that it had contributed to a
woman’s death in September 2014.
Cheryl Richards, 31, was returning home
at about 2 o’clock in the morning with
her partner after going to a party. They
were walking along a more rural part of
the A361 in Wiltshire, which was unlit
and did not have a pavement. The road
was in complete darkness, as Wiltshire
County Council had decided three years
earlier amid austerity cuts, to switch off
the street lights from midnight to 5.30am
to save £300,000 a year. Neither was
wearing any reflective clothing. Miss
Richards was hit by a car and died from
head injuries. At the inquest in May 2015,
her partner described how they both had
been drinking but neither was drunk.
He thought that it was safe to walk
home along the grass verge. Witnesses
confirmed that they had seen the couple
walking along the side of the road. On
several occasions, Miss Richards had
also been seen walking in the middle of
the road, although there was no apparent
intention to have caused herself harm.
The inquest heard that the car’s driver
had also been drinking. He initially left the
scene of the accident but then returned
before handing himself in to the Police.
In England and Wales, the alcohol limit
for drivers is 35 microgrammes per 100
millilitres of breath; 80 milligrammes of
alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood; or
107 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of
urine. When the driver was eventually
breathalyzed, he was found to have 38
microgrammes of alcohol in his breath.
60
However, further tests showed that at the
time of the crash, he was likely to have
been at 34 milligrams, being just under
the limit. A toxicology report showed
that Miss Richards had 139 milligrams
of alcohol in her system. Accident
Investigators assessed that the driver
would only have been able to see Miss
Richards at 25m, if he were driving with
dimmed headlights. At that distance,
anyone driving at the relevant speed limit
would have been faced with an inevitable
collision due to her position in the road,
which left a vehicle with insufficient time
to avoid her.
The Coroner ruled that given the lack of
street lighting and that Miss Richards
was not wearing any reflective clothing,
it would have been impossible for the
driver, or any others driving on that
road, to have avoided her. He added
that it was not clear whether the driver’s
attention and reactions were or were not
decreased by the level of alcohol in his
system.
However, the Coroner did conclude
that the lack of street lighting was one
of the main factors in her death. This
case follows a previous inquest in
Warwickshire in December 2012, where
a Coroner concluded that the switching
off of street lighting as a costs saving
measure contributed to the death of a
student. More details can be found at:
Inquests Impact of Austerity Cuts Data
published in December 2014, suggested
that about three quarters of councils
are either dimming their street lights or
switching them off completely to save
money. There has been an eight fold
increase in the number of street lights
being turned off since 2010.
Although Councils may be saving
hundreds of thousands of pounds a year
in electricity bills, Police data published
in 2014 showed that night time road
deaths had increased by 39% since 2009
when lights were switched off. Serious
injuries were up by 27% and minor
injuries by 19%. A total of 324 more
people were killed or injured after dark
on the roads over this period, compared
with a general downward trend in road
casualties. As a result of such a finding
at an inquest, a family could be advised
to seek compensation against a local
authority. If they were able to establish
negligence against that authority
stemming from its decision to turn off
street lighting, then they and, or their
insurer, could be faced with having to
pay a substantial damages award, which
could exceed the annual sums being
saved in electricity. It would be advisable
for local authorities to consider the
conclusions of this inquest against their
current street lighting policies and weigh
up the risks and costs benefits involved.
By Michael Mulcare