Adaptive street lighting system presents an innovative energy-efficient smart lighting technique that leverages advanced technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and adaptive control algorithms. This introduces a cutting-edge energy-efficient smart street lighting technique designed to address the growing need for sustainability and energy conservation in rural environments. The proposed system utilizes a network of sensors to detect real-time environmental conditions, such as ambient light levels and pedestrian or vehicular presence. Based on this data, an adaptive control algorithm dynamically adjusts the brightness of streetlights, ensuring they provide adequate illumination while minimizing energy consumption. Depending upon number of vehicles passed during night, streetlights are operated at four different intensities that is from 20% to 50% with the step size of 10% in the absence of vehicles while operating at 100% intensity upon vehicle’s arrival. This dimming operation not only enhances the life span of streetlights but also enables significant conservation of energy up to 84%. This system smartly takes an action based on the presence or absence of vehicles and sunlight via light dependent resistor (LDR) and infrared (IR) sensors.