Do you know dark parking lot is best place for kidnappers or robbers to hide? Violent crimes are more likely to occur if the garage is dim. The criminals cannot be discovered until you are being robbed, or your cars are being stolen. Even if there are surveillance cameras, they might not be able to capture the clear image of the gangsters in darkness. Getting the brighter lights in parking lot can help protect our property and improve the safety. The article is introducing to you 6 dangers if the parking area is too dark.
Crimes Happened in Dark Parking Lots
1. Robbery
If you were a robber, would you prefer a dark or bright parking garage? Especially for indoor parking garage, there are many shields like the SUVs and the pillars. The robbers can hide in the middle of the cars, then wait for their next target. Due to the darkness, it would be extremely difficult for the victims to discover the bandits hidden in the parking area at night unless you are equipped with military grade night vision goggle.
Women should avoid using the indoor car parks, or those having many corners and pillars. Outdoor parking lot is the better choice because your scream can be heard just in case. Definitely the practical way to fix it is to improve the lighting in the gloomy car park. LED is one of the best light sources because of its ultra-brightness.
2. Auto Burglary
Do you know? About 10% of crimes happens in parking lot. Burglary is one of them. In such the dim environment, the burglar is just like invisible to CCTV, security guard or car owner. Especially you are having the luxury cars like Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz or BMW, you are more likely susceptible to auto theft. The tips is that never park your automobile in the area where does not have sufficient lighting.
In addition, if we are going to put a stack of cash in the cabinet, we need ask ourselves “is it necessary”? Remember, the burglars are always looking for the easy targets (cars) to break-ins. They will spot your money, jewelry and other valued properties Never trust the simple lock of your car. We need to get prepared.
However, if you are witnessing someone is trying to unlock your cars in dark parking garage, we should not approach them as they might have deadly weapon like handguns or knife. Instead, we can shout at a distance to scare them away, or pointing the flashlight to their face. The purpose of doing this is to assist the CCTV or your smartphone camera to capture & recognize the face of the thefts.
3. Dark Parking Lot Kidnapping
Dim parking lot is the best place for kidnappers because it has both hardware (cars) and software (darkness). Once you are taken away, they will force you to get into their lorry. It seems parking lot is one of the most dangerous areas, as there are so many hiding spots for the kindappers – they may squat behind the car and wait for their target. So, we need to stay alert and pause your music when we are walking alone inside the parking space. In the absence of light, it is very unlikely for us to spot the kidnappers unless we are having thermal detector.
Potential Hazards of Maintaining a Dim Parking Garage
4. Personal Injuries & Property Loss
Violent crimes are more easily to occur at night, or in the dim parking areas. Majority of the thefts are targeting valued belongings, but not your life. If you think they are a group of robbers and you are threatened even for a long distance, just protect yourself and run away first.
Although adding lights in the parking lot does not 100% reduce the crime rate, a well-lit area does improve the security and safety for vulnerable people groups.
5. Car Accidents Due to Poor Vision of Drivers
Aside from crimes, insufficient lights also cause car accidents. Imagine the drivers are steering around a corner in the narrow parking lot. You will be hit easily due to the poor vision of drivers. It also causes car crashes if the road users cannot see the surrounding obstacles, no matter for outdoor or indoor parking lot at night.
6. Lawsuit Due to Dark Parking Lot Lights
In fact, dark lighting will get the parking lot owner in trouble. If the victim slips and falls due to improper & inadequate lighting in the parking area, they can initiate the lawsuit against the owner. It is because reasonable people can foresee that dark sidewalk or driveway will let people hard to see the roads, and thus easily get hurt. Then, you might need to pay millions of dollars for compensation.
If you have a parking lot business, you should prevent your parking garage from getting to dark or spooky. Here is the way to have the proper lighting.
Bright LED Parking Lot Lighting – A Way to Solve
We understand that parking lot needs sufficient lighting to prevent the crimes or accidents from happening. How to illuminate such the large areas?
1. Brightness of Parking Lot
LED light is the best choice when it comes to mercury vapor, metal halide and HPS replacement. It has high lumen output of 14,000 to 700,000 lm, which is suitable for parking areas having different scale.
How bright should the parking lot have? Generally, the lux (or brightness) level should be maintained at around 150 to 250 lux. If the parking garage is as dark as 20 lux, the pedestrians can barely see the roads and cars. The driver will depend heavily on the headlights.
Having the high brightness level can also improve the security as the CCTV can recognize the faces of thefts.
2. Lighting Uniformity
The illumination should be uniform across the car parking areas. As we can see from the photo, there are bright and dark areas. It is caused by the low uniformity lighting design. Hence, some of the regions is lit while others remain dark. To improve the safety, we can have professional lighting design of parking lot, which gives highly uniform lighting. There are no bright or dim spots on the ground. We are LED lighting company offering quality & affordable luminaires and free lighting design. Contact us for more support. We are eager to solve your questions.
3. Durability
a. Waterproof Luminaries
For the outdoor installation, the parking lot luminaires should be waterproof. Our LED lights have the IP66 waterproof function. They work under the adverse weather condition. If the lights go off in rainy days, it will lead to disastrous consequence.
b. Long Lifespan to Save Your Cost
In addition, our LED parking lot lights have 80,000 hours lifespan, which provides continuous, high-quality illumination over 30 years (7 to 8 hours per day). It saves the parking garage maintenance cost. If you use metal halide lamp, you may need to replace them every 1 to 2 years because the lumens of those lights depreciate quickly.
c. Better Heat Dissipation for Indoor Parking Lot
Heat leads to lumen depreciation no matter you are using LED or HID. We have the special open design giving better air ventilation. Hence, the junction & ambient temperature can be reduced. The lights can last even longer!
4. Glare-free Lighting for Drivers
Glare-free optics is another premium feature of our parking garage lights. Glare does irritate the drivers’ eyes and increases their reaction time. The drivers might not be able to see a specific area if there is blinding light spot. The contrast will even be higher if the parking lot is dark.
Our LED lighting reduces the harmful glare up to 65% when comparing to the traditional HID lighting solution. Less glare for better safety.
5. Color Rendering Index
Color rendering index (CRI) describes how the lights can reproduce the color of object. If the CRI is 100 (maximum), it means we can see the 100% real color of the objects. In case there are thefts inside the parking lot, we can identify the colors of the vehicle being stolen, cloths of robbers, etc. We can provide the police with accurate information if we have bright illumination in the crime scene.
If you want to improve or replace the lighting inside parking lot, please feel free to contact us by using our form. We are looking forward to your message.