Safety First
When driving at night, visibility is one of the most important factors and safety precautions that should be considered. This same logic applies to the use of your driveway at night. Visibility is extremely crucial to ensuring safety for all your friends and family that use your driveway at night.
Many safety hazards can be caused by poor visibility of your driveway at night. These safety hazards include ones you have control over and ones that other drivers must consider too. When you have a poorly lit driveway at night, it may be very hard for passing cars to see your entrance. Due to this they may not understand the potential for a car to be pulling out of the driveway. This same risk applies for family and friends who are pulling into your driveway or currently in it. If visibility is low, it can be near impossible to see what could be in your entrance before pulling in.
Lighting is Most Important
The best way to get the most use out of your driveway at night is to have the best possible lighting for whatever situation you need. There are many forms of lighting one can choose from to help illuminate your driveway at night, ranging from flood lights, to small reflectors, to everything in between. These forms of lighting can do as much as serve as a small reminder of the presence of a driveway, as well as completely illuminate it.
Proper lighting is the best way to get a sense of security and safety when using your driveway at night. Whether you are pulling into your drive or exiting, lighting can make all potential hazards be visible.
Having a lighting setup designed for your needs does more than increase the safety of your entryway, it also allows for more practical use during the nighttime. With proper lighting one can properly park in their driveway without having poor visibility, and one can use the space as they would during the day.
Reflectors on the Street Side
Reflectors are a cheap and easy way to help make your driveway at night more visible and therefor safe. Placing reflectors on the street facing section of the driveway can help the entryway become much more visible to cars passing by. By making the entryway visible for all passing cars, this allows cars to be aware of the possibility of a car pulling out onto the road, or a person in the general area. Without proper lighting, passing cars may not even notice a driveway entrance on the side of the road and will pass at speeds at which they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Not only will it help signal passing cars that there is a driveway entrance approaching, but it can also serve as a reminder for you coming home. If you have a dark entryway, you know how hard it can be to see the entrance on a dark night. Putting reflectors at the section of where your property meets the road serves as a great signal that you are approaching your driveway.
Solar Lights on Perimeter
Having a perimeter of lights along a walkway or driveway is becoming one of the more common landscaping features added as of recent years. These style of lights are extremely easy to maintain and install. Solar lights require no wiring so there is no need to dig up your current surface foundations and begin a long project. Due to the solar capabilities of these lights, there is no need to charge them, or worry about power. They collect sunlight during the day and convert the light into energy and the lights turn on when there is no light detected.
On top of these lights being extremely low maintenance and relatively cheap, there also create a very pleasing and effective perimeter of light where ever installed. Putting a ring of these lights around the outside of your driveway allows for the driveway to be clearly displayed. This allows you to pull into your driveway at night and know exactly what the dimensions are. This ensures you park properly every night regardless of how dark it is outside.
Motion Sensor Lighting
Motion sensor lights offer similar practical uses as solar lights, but often covered more of an area, and is only in use when it needs to be. The way these lights work is when there is motion picked up by the sensor, the light turns on. Typically these lights are placed in high places and look down on the area they illuminate. By doing so, this lighting allows the entire driveway to be lit and able to use. Whether you are pulling into your driveway at night, or finishing a project and the sun went down, this motion sensor flood light can make the entire driveway space visible. This again helps with safety by making sure all potential hazards are illuminated.
