When exactly are lights needed?

[lordofthemark]

this afternoon it was grey and snowing lightly. Cars mostly had their lights on. While I might have wimped out anyway, I told myself I was heading home early because I had no lights.

Would lights be required in conditions like today?

Topic

[lordofthemark]

@Terpfan 44210 wrote:

To your last question, I think riding on the streets at night without lights is a very daring (along the darwin lines) adventure.

To clarify

The last question was about riding during the day, in sunlight. Since there are folks who do ride with lights even then.

The first post to the thread was about riding in early afternoon, on a cloudy day, with rather light snowfall.

I wouldn’t dream of riding in the street (or anywhere else, for that matter) after dark without lights. I would put my bike on the bus, and walk it home from the busstop before I would do that.

[rcannon100]

@lordofthemark 44196 wrote:

so until i have lights and high viz clothes I should stay off roads, regardless of conditions?

Buy High Viz today on amazon. It will be to you in three days. Your safety will go up significantly.

Do everything you can to be visible —- and then assume they dont see you anyway :rolleyes:

[PotomacCyclist]

The more visible you are, the better. In the winter, my outer layer is a “screaming yellow” windbreaker. In the summer, I only wear white or fluorescent colored shirts. (I usually don’t wear bike jerseys except during races.)

I tend not to ride on trails at night (which means that I don’t bike-commute that often in the winter, or I take CaBi in the morning and Metro back) so my standard front light serves my purposes. It’s not super-super bright but it works well enough in the well-lit areas where I tend to ride. My tail light is an extra-wide gadget with 5 separate lights. If I set it to blink mode or blink-flash mode, it’s very difficult to miss.

I used to have the Bike Glow lights on my mountain bike (which I never ride off-road). I could tell that everyone saw me when I had that turned on. I would get a lot of comments like “Cool lights!” One guy even tried to buy it from me on the spot, but I declined. (Maybe if he had offered $1,000…) Unfortunately, part of the wire became loose one night and got tangled up in my pedals. I yanked the wire from the battery pack and mangled the wire. Maybe I’ll get around to replacing it one of these days.

[Terpfan]

@lordofthemark 44216 wrote:

To clarify

The last question was about riding during the day, in sunlight. Since there are folks who do ride with lights even then.

The first post to the thread was about riding in early afternoon, on a cloudy day, with rather light snowfall.

I wouldn’t dream of riding in the street (or anywhere else, for that matter) after dark without lights. I would put my bike on the bus, and walk it home from the busstop before I would do that.

Ahh, sorry, I misunderstood. It makes much more sense now. I didn’t get the impression before that you had suicidal tendencies so I was wondering why you would venture down the nighttime sans lights–of course the obvious answer I miss being that I misunderstood.

Daytime riding, I don’t usually turn on my lights although I also usually wear bright colors (neon green/yellow, red, or something I feel stands out against everything else). If it’s raining hard, I usually will at least turn my back light onto blinking. But I’m a little different of a case as I only use the streets briefly since I’m mostly on cycletrack and MVT. A lot of people think the blinking strobe light helps in daytime, but I think drivers just confuse it with the ubquituous red light cameras.

[vvill]

@PotomacCyclist 44325 wrote:

I used to have the Bike Glow lights on my mountain bike (which I never ride off-road). I could tell that everyone saw me when I had that turned on. I would get a lot of comments like “Cool lights!” One guy even tried to buy it from me on the spot, but I declined. (Maybe if he had offered $1,000…) Unfortunately, part of the wire became loose one night and got tangled up in my pedals. I yanked the wire from the battery pack and mangled the wire. Maybe I’ll get around to replacing it one of these days.

Last year I had a parking attendant ask about LED lights I’d set up on my folding bike for the Crystal City Diamond Derby, and when I told him I’d assembled them myself (shoddily) he asked if he could pay me to make him some! He wanted them for his kids’ bikes. I gave him a post-it with the bike glow site’s URL.

[Author]

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