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PSA: I tried to fix a flickering streetlight with a specific count and it worked in a way that makes no sense
There's a streetlight on my corner in Springfield that has flickered for years, always in a pattern of three quick flashes. Last Tuesday, I got fed up and decided to count the flashes out loud to see if it was regular. I said 'one, two, three' right as it flickered. On the third count, the light went solid and has stayed perfectly normal for five days now. It wasn't a loose bulb because the city just replaced the whole unit two months ago and the flicker came back. I didn't touch anything, I just counted. Has anyone else had a weird, repeatable fix for something that seems like a hardware problem?
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the_miles6mo ago
How is that not just a wild coincidence? Streetlights are weird, especially the newer ones with sensors and timers. My neighbor had one that only flickered when it was humid, and the city guy said it was a bad connection in the photoeye. You counting probably lined up with the internal timer finally resetting after a power surge or something. It feels like you fixed it, but the light was just ready to stop acting up on its own.
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stone.simon6mo ago
Wait, they replaced the whole unit and the flicker came back? That’s the part that gets me. If it was just a bad bulb or a loose wire, a whole new light should have fixed it for good. But it started up again with the same three-flash pattern. That points to something else in the circuit, maybe on the pole itself, not the light. Your counting is still wild, but the fact the city’s fix didn’t stick is the real mystery here.
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rileyw724mo ago
Hold up, are you seriously saying three days of perfect timing is just a "wild coincidence"? That's a lot to swallow. The fact the city's replacement unit replicated the exact same flicker pattern (not just a flicker, but the same three-flash code) screams that the problem is upstream, not in the fixture itself. I get that photoeyes and timers are finicky, but the internal timer theory doesn't explain why the pattern started up again after the swap. If the light was just "ready to stop," why would it start again with the same specific behavior? The coincidence argument needs a lot more evidence to beat the straightforward observation that something on the pole is consistently messing with that light.
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