Possible temp solution to "that street light"

[bones]

I was talking to someone at work about street lights. He told me that he lived up the road from a Leagues Club and at night the drunken youths kick the street light pole in front of his house. (He's not into astronomy rather trying to sleep). Makes a big racket of course - that was his complaint. Anyway, being one of those metal street poles that are cropping up in newer developments these days, he said that if these power poles receive a knock that is hard enough it takes the shock of the knock as a collision with say a vehicle and cuts the supply of electricity to the light for about an hour. Unfortunately I have the old wooden telegraph poles in my street so I can't verify this theory.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Wood = chainsaw

More permanent solution

They should have lights that are more at street level and throw their light down and not up.

[Ric]

That's quite interesting Bones, thankfully I don't have any street lights out my way to test the theory.

[MrB (Simon)]

It does work, though they don't stay off for long, maybe 5 or 10 mins before they strike again.
Also, It's a myth about the car-crash-cutting-the-power thing.
The white-light globes used are Mercury vapour, kicking the light shocks the vapour and it condenses back to a liquid. Kick the light out often enough and it kills the globe... it will glow an intense greenish-white colour and no amount of kicking will shut it off.....

LOL, used to kick them out a lot in my youth, with my head sometimes!

The orange-light globes are Sodium vapour... dunno if it works with these ones, never tried it.