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A while back, my husband Joe and I were coming home from a road trip. We were on I-95 South, which hugs the eastern seaboard until we reached I-4, and then we headed west. For a good portion of our drive, we noticed that many, albeit not all, of the street lamps on the highway were more of a purple hue than the white we were used to.

Huh?

A few months later, we noticed that one of our local mega strip malls, The Loop, was suddenly lighted by purple lights, as well. Maybe 2 or 3 in the whole parking lot were white, but all the rest were purple.

We’ve driven on those roads at nighttime before, and had been to The Loop a bajillion times; their respective nighttime lights had always been white. So we wondered what was up with the purple lights. Were they some sort of new, energy-saving light? Have they been proven to decrease road rage or increase alertness? Did someone think they were just prettier or cooler-looking than the old white lights?

None of the above.

It turns out they’re a manufacturer defect.

Yes, really

The lights in question are LEDs. They start out as white but over time they start to change to purple. The problem comes from a component in the light that fails prematurely. That allows too much of the purple light spectrum to shine through, and it changes the color of the light from white to purple (or purplish blue).

They’re everywhere

To date (and we’re going back a few years now), the problem has occurred in California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and, I’m sure, other states (actually, a truck driver friend of ours says they’ve seen them in all of the lower 48 states). Our friends in the Great White North have had the issue in Vancouver and Winnipeg, as well. We’ve heard there have been some purple light sightings in Ireland, too. We’re talking thousands upon thousands of lights, if not more, all told.

It even has a name. In 2022, Business Insider called it the Great Purpling.

Here’s a video of what they look like as you’re driving (the purple lights start at roughly the 0:24 mark):

Local energy companies replace the lights, but it’s a slow process since they have to be replaced one by one. While Milwaukee, for example, said they only had about 300 to replace, cities such as Topeka and Wichita had between 2,000 and 3,000 purple lights.

Some places don’t even bother to replace them. I guess they figure purple lights are better than no lights at all.

Joe was driving, and he said that at 1 o’clock in the morning, they looked weird. Frankly, I thought the purple lights looked kind of nice. Too bad they’ll probably eventually have to be replaced.

Have you seen them where you are?

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