Cyclists fined for no lights

[Vorpal]

I have peronal experience of one road accident where a pedestrian was walking along a straight rural 60mph limit road (no footways) and was hit and killed by a taxi. I am convinced that if he had been wearing white, or hiviz clothing or a flashing light he would be alive today.

Obviously I don't suggest peds wear lights I mention that only because I cycled the same road on my commute for several years and never had a problem with near misses at night.

Actually the highway code says in the rules for pedestrians...
3 Help other road users to see you. Wear or carry something light-coloured, bright or fluorescent in poor daylight conditions. When it is dark, use reflective materials (e.g. armbands, sashes, waistcoats, jackets, footwear), which can be seen by drivers using headlights up to three times as far away as non-reflective materials.
5 Organised walks. Large groups of people walking together should use a pavement if available; if one is not, they should keep to the left. Look-outs should be positioned at the front and back of the group, and they should wear fluorescent clothes in daylight and reflective clothes in the dark. At night, the look-out in front should show a white light and the one at the back a red light. People on the outside of large groups should also carry lights and wear reflective clothing.

Also, road safety groups such as Brake and ROSPA recommend wearing or carrying lights when walking in unlit areas. I normally carry a torch, although that's as much to see where I'm going as to be visible.

Taking the thread further off-topic.... Why don't school uniforms include light or reflective material? Isn't it likely that the practise of sending school kids to walk to and from school (and after-school activities) in dark clothes affects the casualty rate? Why worry about cyclists not using lights when school kids by the millions violate the HWC on dreary winter days? Even the ones who are driven to school must walk some distance. So many people drive to schools in our area that there isn't a parking or drop-off spot available within a quarter mile, unless you get lucky or arrive late

[DavidT]

yet we seem to be working ourselves up into a hi-vis and uber lighting frenzy.
I just don't see the point.

Are we, really?

There is surely a sensible middle ground to be had (that in truth, must cyclists comply with) of having sensible lights, that give a benefit to other road users (and therefore ourselves) - between being unlit, and alternatively looking like something out of Close Encounters. My Toplights, enhanced occasionally by a flashing light depending on where and when I am riding, is a good example of the middle ground?

[thirdcrank]

Any number of hi-vis sellers include togs for small children in their ranges. On the subject of children walking to school in hi-vis, am I correct in thinking that the walking-bus idea has lost popularity. It seems to be a while since I saw one of those crocodiles of children walking to school all kitted out in saturn yellow although that might be because I'm still lazing in bed . The practicality is that children may be safer if they can be seen from miles away; there is something in me that says it's repugnant that children walking to school cannot rely on adult road users to ensure they are safe.

[snibgo]

I've seen Mums each walking two or three kids to Junior School, on pavements, all decked out in hi-vis. It looks weird, but I prefer that to more cars on the road.

[kwackers]

yet we seem to be working ourselves up into a hi-vis and uber lighting frenzy.
I just don't see the point.

Are we, really?

There is surely a sensible middle ground to be had (that in truth, must cyclists comply with) of having sensible lights, that give a benefit to other road users (and therefore ourselves) - between being unlit, and alternatively looking like something out of Close Encounters. My Toplights, enhanced occasionally by a flashing light depending on where and when I am riding, is a good example of the middle ground?

I think so. We have people on this and other threads proclaiming that riding without lights is the height of stupidity - as far as I can tell with no proof that it is at all.
On other threads we have people looking for ever brighter and brighter lighting.
Up above we have people citing the highway code for making yourself as visible as possible as a pedestrian.
Indeed in my running club you're no longer allowed to run with the club on an evening without hi-vis!

The world is going mad.

There are two basic points. You don't have to be seen from miles away - indeed that may even be a bad thing since you'll have identified and forgotten by the time the motorist reaches you. In urban situations cyclists/pedestrians are easy to spot at night - from several hundred yards!
The second point is that we're playing the motorists game, more and more they want ownership of the roads (and pavements), some will deliberately intimidate and try to force you over, even whilst out running along country lanes I've had someone deliberately drive at me, hand on horn pointing at the grass verge.

What I'm trying to get at is: lights are not the be all and end all of road safety. Not having them whilst illegal and a bad choice for all sorts of reasons is not the huge danger we think, conversely thinking you're somehow safe because you have lots of hi-power lights stuck to you is a mistake.

We spend all our time decrying elf and safety overkill and trying to tell people how safe the roads really are and then behave exactly the opposite when it comes to lights.
Both can't be right, perhaps its time we agreed which one it is.

[Vorpal]

What I'm trying to get at is: lights are not the be all and end all of road safety. Not having them whilst illegal and a bad choice for all sorts of reasons is not the huge danger we think, conversely thinking you're somehow safe because you have lots of hi-power lights stuck to you is a mistake.

We spend all our time decrying elf and safety overkill and trying to tell people how safe the roads really are and then behave exactly the opposite when it comes to lights.
Both can't be right, perhaps its time we agreed which one it is.

Agreed, the emphasis on safety gear of any sort for cyclists is a part of the cycling-is-dangerous and KSI-reduction-equals-road-safety mindset. That said, the road environment being what it is, I think I'd like to give drivers a bit of help seeing me.

[7_lives_left]

I have posted this before.

One evening last winter I had a driver who had been following me wind down his window to speak to me when I was stopped at a T junction. The reason he felt compelled to speak to me was that I was wearing black jeans and a black coat. He said that I wasn't sufficiently visible and that I was in danger of being run down (not by his 4x4 of course, but by one of the other drivers).

I was sorely tempted to tell him where to get off, though I didn't make any reply.

My bike is equipped with a B&M dynamo light set that would have been considered state-of-the-art 4 years ago. It also has pedal reflectors and reflective sidewall on the tyres that aren't covered in muck because it has disk brakes rather than rim brakes. The pannier I was using also has a (scotch-lite) reflective patch on it.

The road I was traveling on was a semi rural one, without any street lighting and without any pavement for the use by pedestrians. One 100m section is particularly narrow with "scrape your side panels" brick and flint walls immediately adjacent on both sides of the road. Elsewhere one side is wooded with dense undergrowth trimmed back by the passing traffic and other side is a grass verge. The speed limit is 40 mostly, 30 for the narrow bits. Historically it was an open limit.

For this one driver at least anything less than a brightly lit Christmas tree was insufficient (Hell, I was a bloody Christmas tree). I think Kwackers is right in so far as we have a problem with the expectations of motorised road users.

Edit for grammar

[Tonyf33]

No comment

Why no comment, if you don't agree with my post why not give reasons, don't be shy ?

[Tonyf33]

Tonyf33

There's actually very little paperwork involved in issuing a fixed penalty notice unless the recipient decides to ignore it. It seems to me that once you have passed legislation, it cannot be up to the individual to decide whether enforcement should apply to them. In this case, it seems that the allged offenders have been offered a variation of the vehicle defect rectification scheme for motor vehicles which was piloted on a trial basis by one of my colleagues in the early 1980's and is now on a statutory footing.

How would you deal with the person who decided not to fit their freebie lamps from Santa's little helper in a blue uniform (or, more likely, a hi-viz anorak?) What if they decided to put them on ebay instead of fitting them?

If the police are going to respond to the heavy public pressure about cycling without lights, then inviting alleged offenders to fit lamps as an alternative to prosecution seems proprtionate to me.

So lets say 10 minutes as a base figure on the street per perpetrator, how much of police time does that cost? Then paperwork back at the cop shop plus follow up should the person take up offer of buying the lights & taking up more time & more paperwork. How about if a person decides to ignore the FPN, how much cost then? Even paying the £30 probably doesn't cover the whole cost involved. .

As I said you make the persons fit the lights there and then, if they refuse then give them the FPN. Handing out £2 sets of lights which is what it would cost if bought by the tens of thousands there is no resale value if you can get them for free in the first place.

[irc]

I'm not saying it's not better - I'm saying it shouldn't matter. An important difference.
There's absolutely no reason why a driver can't see an unlit bicycle in plenty of time.
Ignoring bicycles that shoot out from behind cars or do other stupid manoeuvres then a bicycle is easy to spot but yet we seem to be working ourselves up into a hi-vis and uber lighting frenzy.
I just don't see the point.

I agree it shouldn't matter. Most of the time it doesn't. There are enough drunk, drugged, or just inattentive drivers about though that I like to stack the odds as far in my favour as I can.

[kwackers]

I agree it shouldn't matter. Most of the time it doesn't. There are enough drunk, drugged, or just inattentive drivers about though that I like to stack the odds as far in my favour as I can.

Good luck! My understanding of drunk and drugged motorists is they're more likely to be 'drawn in' by your flashing lights!

(There is some evidence BTW that you'd actually be safer without lights - although probably only in an urban area.)

[thirdcrank]

Tonyf33

There is a lot more to this sort of thing than you are including in your calculation.

Obviously, any police activity which involves taking people's names and addresses involves some paperwork. Issuing a fixed penalty ticket is right at the bottom of the scale and here the intention is not even to take it that far. The sort of paperwork you hear so much protest about, which can be measured in hours or even days, rather than a few minutes, is the preparation of even a simple court file for crime to the CPS. As this is about lights, I won't dwell on crime files but that's where most of the time is taken up.

To have the police distributing free lamps to offenders would be a bureaucratic nightmare, most of which would be dictated by public finance accounting requirements and there's no guarantee it would have the slightest effect on cycling without lights.

It seems to me that the beauty of this scheme (as reflected by what seems to be a majority of the posts above) is that it meets the demands of the outraged (self-righteous) public for something positive to be done, while doing it in a proportional way so that enforcement is not oppressive. I could imagine that anybody who decided to defy the system might try stiff details or not bothering returning with the receipt to see what happened and some would be forgotten and so slip through the net. Shock, horror That's the way things operate these days: presentation is all important. In this case the enraged writers to the local press, etc., are placated with reports of a "crackdown" but cyclists have little room to grumble that they are being hit with heavy-handed enforcement; the local rag gets a local interest story that's a bit different to usual and life goes on unchanged. OTOH, anything which smacks of lawbreaking attracting a reward is generally a non-starter.

[snibgo]

I think Tonyf33 has a great idea. When I need some new lights, I would just cycle around at night until a friendly plod stopped me and gave me some.

[Cunobelin]

I think Tonyf33 has a great idea. When I need some new lights, I would just cycle around at night until a friendly plod stopped me and gave me some.

The ones given out in Cambridge were actually illegal as they complied with neither BSI6102/3 or RVLR (2005)!

My thoughts are mixed as I found that a dark pair of trousers, black helmet, white shirt and an urban glow jacket works wonders..... now whether that is about my visibility making me more noticeable or simply being more noticeable as I look more like a Police cyclist would be debatable!

I would not go out without lights, but equally do not expect them to be an answer to the appalling standards of some drivers

[irc]

[(There is some evidence BTW that you'd actually be safer without lights - although probably only in an urban area.)

What evidence?