snoopycafe:
I suggest you sit under that particular streetlight for a couple of hours and observe how many times it flickers on and off. I think you'll find it has nothing to do with anything you do.
I've been experiencing this phenomenon since 1983. I am a totally science-oriented person and absolute skeptic. I believe in nothing (though I'm reasonably sure that when we die, we simply stop living), no superstition, no religion (which I regard as superstition), etc. I've been a devotee of James ("the Amazing") Randi for decades, and have personally busted astrologers (I'm a former radio talk-show host), by demonstrating the, "you only notice the 'hits,' and ignore the misses," effect. The closest thing I have to a belief system is my assumption that everything that happens has some logical reason.
I've watched street lights go off as I approach them for years, and have made it a point to watch street lights as far as I can see, to see if distant lights blink off before I'm near them, and it's precisely because I NEVER see them go off on the next block (for example) that I've been forced to wonder what the f*** is going on.
I've read some attempts at scientific explanations (like some people having stronger EMF than others, or that it's caused by a person's body weight pressing on a faulty underground cable), and they fall very short of being convincing. For one thing, I first noticed the phenomenon while driving, and the lights usually went out just as I approached the area they lit (not when I was directly under them). I can't believe that any person's body could generate a strong enough EMF to not only affect a streetlight, but to do it from inside a car.
I look to science to explain anything I don't understand, but sometimes the existing science isn't adequate. Thomas Jefferson was unable to accept the existence of meteors, and once wrote, "I would rather believe that two yankee [Harvard] professors would lie to me, than to believe stones fall from the skies." It is not remembered as one of his more brilliant concepts.
The cause of this phenomenon will no doubt be understood someday; today it is not. In the meantime, science is not served by smug dismissals of witnesses, many of whom, like me, have experienced this for decades, and have subjected our observations to rigorous scrutiny.