Well, you can't just leave it there...

I assume someone is working on the lights? Cause I don't think anyone is lazy enough to just leave a brand new light, PC and lamp just lying on the ground.

yea thats like them just giving street lights to the public XD i need to be in a city like that

Well yeah people were working on the lights. xD I caught Xcel Energy taking down an old pole (The pole was still up but it lost it's truss arm and light long ago, I dunno where they went!) And they were putting up a new pole and installed this new M-250 R2. I got to watch them install the whole pole! I got another picture of one of the three guys working on it putting the M-250 R2 on the pole.. (when it was on the ground)

I watched them take down the old pole, for unscrewing the bolts they used some tool that connected to the truck with a huge pipe looking cord, and it looked VERY powerful. They used it to unscrew the old pole from the ground, they used it to put the new arm on the new pole (because they can't fit the arm connected to the pole in their truck) And they used the tool to attach the new pole to the new breakaway base they added and the breakaway base to the original base.

They added a breakaway base to the new pole, the old pole didn't have one but they added one. I guess it's mandatory now to install a breakaway base on new installations.

I got to keep the box in this picture though! And the lamp box and the photocell bag, the M-250 R2 box had some instructions!

Where was the GE lamp made?

That tool would be an impact wrench, I don't think there is anything requiring breakaway bases but they are a good idea.

I think they are required unless the pole in in a median, on a bridge, or it has a guard rail in front of it. The older poles here have breakaway bases. I assume they were added in since breakaway bases haven't been around forever.

I believe here they are required for all highways and freeways unless they are: 30 or more ft away from the roadway, behind a guard rail, barrier, median, or in the case of a highway inside an built up area. Our 50s era freeway lighting installs didn't have breakaway bases though.

I think breakaway bases came sometime in the 50s or the 60s and the oldest I've seen still in use are from the 60s. Oddly those breakaway bases were cast on to the pole so you have to replace the entire pole if it gets knocked down

After some knockdowns from breakaway bases I have seen them re-use the pole. But not often though.

There still is a lot of poles in Denver that don't have breakaway bases, well on the normal streets though. All the freeways have them. Even if there is a barrier in front of the pole there still are breakaway bases.

How exactly do breakaway bases.. Work?

When a car hits the pole, they break, pretty simple.

Yep, some bases are actually just a cover and four breakaway couplers and those shear away at the couplers. Some older style bases here are cast aluminium which shatter when broken.

For steel poles, breakaway bases are more for safty reasons. The aluminum poles without breakaway bases here just break off clean about a foot or so from the base when a car hits them so I think breakaway bases with aluminum poles is more so that the pole can be reused rather then replacing it because it broke in half. Since the breakaway base has less resistance to the impact than the pole, the pole will likely be salvageable and won't rip apart.