𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Former teacher Sharon Stone has described changing her cycling or walking routes in the dark because of a lack of street lighting.

She told how she feels “very cautious” in unlit areas of Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

The 63-year-old said: “I take different routes to stay in the safer areas with street lighting, which makes my journey longer, or I have to pay for a taxi on a route that I could easily walk.”

Ms Stone said her local authority has replaced older lights with LEDs, which appear “dimmer”.

She said: “What I have noticed is how they’ve replaced the old-fashioned [lights] with more LED kind of lights. They are dimmer. They don’t seem to shed their light over a wider area. I can notice it outside my house.”

She added: “I know there is the cost and then there’s the bright sky and being able to see the stars and things like that but you’ve got to have a balance haven’t you?”

Ms Stone, who sometimes leads women’s group rides, said the inadequate lighting also applies to cycle routes in her area which go through “secluded” industrial land or overgrown parts.

She added: “So you’re forced out onto the road, really, because you just don’t feel safe cycling along those paths. And that’s always a big dilemma at night because obviously cycling at night, you feel a lot more vulnerable than you do in the daytime.

“We have lots of lovely routes in Chesterfield that are recreational routes, which link up three of our lovely parks. 

“They’re great, but you don’t want to be cycling through those at night. Some of them have got a bit of lighting in them, but because you’re so far away from other people, you don’t want to be on those.

“For me, what would improve cycling is if we had better-lit routes to places that you want to go for more utility stuff like into the middle of town, like cafes or pubs. 

“When I was working, getting to work was an issue and coming back in the dark was an issue because one of the paths went around a field, but it went into a real secluded dip over a stream near a main road, but nobody would have seen you there if anything had happened.”

Ms Stone, who started cycling as a teenager and then picked up her bike again 10 years ago, admits she pedals around less in winter “because you don’t feel safe”.

She added: “It just seems a bit unfair that I can’t get to places on my bike when if I was male, you wouldn’t think twice about it because they don’t perceive that danger.”