No one used incandescent street lights! Instead compare LEDs to sodium vapor lights and they don't come off so well. In fact they are worse, but the street looks nicer (it's in color).
Streetlights aren't for doing your makeup, they're for seeing hazards in the roadway that are beyond the range of a vehicle's headlights. Orange is the ideal color for outdoor lighting, because of the way the light-sensitive proteins in our eyes are 'tuned' ('cones' and 'rods', 'photopic' to 'mesopic' and 'scotopic', etc). My notes from a few years ago: https://teslabox.com/2020/01/color-vision-night-vision-notes... - tl/dr: peripheral vision is tuned to blue, 2 of the 3 color-sensitive proteins are highly sensitive to orange light.
Curious: why did you link to that particular thread? 66 comments, including one by yours truly. imho, this is the best of that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855545
Colour rendering doesn't have to be perfect for this use but having full spectrum coverage does have its advantages.
Also, they have high pressure sodium bulbs that widen the color, and then I don't think there are any objects you won't see.
I do believe though, that LEDs for such industrial applications don't or shouldn't suffer the same issues as the little LED bulbs we buy for the home, due to better QC and construction.
In my city the main streets (commercial mostly) are white LEDs and the side streets (residential) are sodium, and I like it that way.
I linked the thread because it's old, and has exactly this topic.