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Light pollution has nothing to do with it, it's simply a matter of perspective - I think some understanding of the how and why of meteor showers would help here, if I may.
There is a kids exercise for understanding meteor showers where you stand a whole lot of dry spaghetti in a flat plate of plasticine. Then you look down the middle of it from the top. The spaghetti sticks in the middle should seem very short and stumpy, as you are looking directly down them. The sticks around the outside should look longer as they spread away from the central point. The same things happens with meteor showers. Any meteors seen very close to the radiant, within 10 degrees of it, will be very short and stumpy, as the meteors are heading directly towards you. I mentioned above that you don't commonly see this. What you usually see, no matter where you are and what level of light pollution is around, are the longer ones, the ones heading to the side of you, so to speak, and they appear to begin about 20 to 30 degrees away from the radiant, or even further. While you may be seeing lots of meteors that start their trains directly overhead your location, the radiant is in reality located further away than you realise.
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