Ok, it's getting dark earlier again. It's time to carry your bike lights with you all the time again.

You think you don't need lights? Well, you piss other cyclists off. You piss drivers off. You are a road hazard to everyone.

Get some lights.

If you can afford a case of beer, four packs of smokes, IKEA furniture, yoga or a ticket to Thrash Monster at T-rock you can afford little blinking lights.

Thrash Monster. Heh.

Harumph! I agree wholeheartedly.

Buy the cheap-ass light set for $20. I don't care if you can't see where you're going. But please make it so I can see you. I find it really disconcerting, whether I'm in a car or on a bike, when you suddenly appear out of nowhere and I think about how easy it would have been to hit you.

And if you want to see where you're going, go to Amazon and search on "cree 1200". For less than $50 you can get a headlight that actually lets you see the road in front of you.

No, lights are like brakes. Not having them actually makes you safer because of the heightened sense of awareness you force yourself to have to make up for your unsafe equipment.

The problem with that is that the people who have that mind set do not have the skills to back it up.

I just don't get the stealth biking thing. Fair or not I think it reflects negatively on all bikers (just like the malignant law breakers).

tg

I cannot really "feel" the road when I wear shoes, so I plan on biking barefoot this winter.
I will also be using only my sense of hearing, and wearing a blindfold.

With great power comes great... never mind.

What really gets me is the scores of bikers (some 20-something hipsters, some hi-viz-wearing bike commuters who are really Old Enough To Know Better) who bike around with only a rear light. I suppose they figure they can see what's ahead of them but not behind them, so they're good.

A *front light* is much more essential than a rear, and in fact, it's the only light required by law. There are many situations in which a car must yield to you where they are either facing you or at a right angle to you -- many more than those situations when a car is overtaking you from the rear.

That said, I think a rear light is also a good idea, since a reflector alone depends on the car seeing you having its headlights on (unfortunately, not something you can depend on). I also think people ought to mount their rear lights, rather than clipping them to their bags. The highest intensity of the light has a fairly limited angle, and you usually end up shining at the ground or at the street lights, rather than the drivers.

I also agree that even cheap lights to the trick, but of course I love splurging a little. I just got a pair of Revolights a couple months ago, and a new Niterider for my road bike worth every penny

Use lights, but IMHO, not blinking. Especially the white one in front. Especially if the front light is extremely bright. Blinking lights are a gimmick; if they actually helped, cars would have them - and try to imagine what a nightmare that would be on the roads at night. Blinking lights throw off our peceptual system and make it harder to judge the actual distance and motion. The original reason for blinking was battery life.

I had a scary experience a few weeks ago while driving at night. I came to a red light and stopped; looked left, and was hit by an obnoxiously bright blinking white light. Instinctively, without thinking, I looked away because some crazy thing was hurting my eyes and degrading my night vision. Then, because the cyclist had never really registered on my consciousness, I almost hit him as I made a right on red. I 'saw' the other cars but not the cyclist, despite (or because of) his over-the-top blinking headlight. My brain had made a snap decision to simply filter out a distraction that was overloading its inputs.

After an accident, I use a blinking front light during the daytime, simply to draw attention to myself. After attention is drawn, it should be bright enough for people to judge my distance by seeing my person. For bright front lights, I don't know how people can stand to leave them blinking at night; every reflective surface flashes back at you every other second. At night, I switch to a solid light. I also use a slow blinking rear light at all times -- not on principal, just to save battery life.

And remember, for daytime use, cars do use lights for visibility -- Daytime Running Lights. Obviously, our lights are a lot smaller and not as powerful; the blinking seems to make up for that during the day.

Interesting analysis and it makes sense.

Of course there is only so much a cyclist can do to be "noticed" in today's urban world, which is already a total cognitive overload for drivers. I remember former mayor Sayles Belton shooting down one proposal by saying "we don't need any more signs".

I have a fairly bright solid light, and a relatively dim flasher on the front. I need the bright light on the section of trail I use (track crossings, runners and wildstuffs), and the flasher is too dim to do the above described annoyance. Red flasher out back. Ive never understood the bright front flasher at night, myself. It does nothing to help you see, as the biker; and just pisses off passers.

and +1 to this:

That's true, though I'm actually more concerned about being seen in areas where there's less information to process -- suburban areas of Minneapolis, Richfield, etc. It's here where people seem more zoned out and apt to drive much faster. Downtown, I'm not sure if an annoying light grabs attention or not, but as a general rule, cars are going slower and are more alert.

I do struggle with the general issue that making myself more visible makes other cyclists (and pedestrians) less visible as a relative matter. Hi-viz clothing is often criticized for this reason -- discerning a human shape in limited light is an important driving skill, and when we go hi-viz, we allow that skill to cheat.

But I don't take this to extremes: obviously, I think lights are still essential. I'd actually really like it if Minneapolis police did a traffic stop on major routes to get people not using lights -- and then included a pair of lights with the cost of the ticket. Copenhagen takes this strategy (but without the free lights) on major routes leaving the city center.