[wusher]

I was frequently walking my dogs at night when they made the switch in my town. I noticed I my visibility was greatly reduced because the LED lights were less diffuse. Anything under the lights I could see just fine but a few feet away was under the vale of darkness.

[cameronh90]

That may be somewhat intentional.

There has been more focus lately on reducing light pollution by ensuring light is projected towards the ground. It's true that LEDs are more naturally directional than other types of lamp, but mirrors and lenses can adjust that if desired.

[throw0101a]

A lot of lamps in the past had little cut-off, sometimes sending light straight up.

New designs, especially Dark Sky approved ones, tend to concentrate a lot more light straight down (0˚), with some spill over over out to 60˚ to the side, but having a hard-ish cut-off by 80˚.

If you simply do a 1:1 replacement of street lamp heads, the new more narrowly-focused units will of course not "splash" light as far—but who wants to install new poles for the new design?