Cycling UK Forum

kwackers wrote:I love these sorts of discussions. The self righteous jump out preaching the code of idiots etc and yet where's their proof?

I'm frankly bored of reading how every cyclist on here has nearly hit a ninja whilst driving along ...

This is pretty sharp language about people you don't agree with. I know you have strong opinions on this and fair enough, so I'll not try to convince you but I'll tell you my own position. I don't think I'm self-righteous about this and I don't remember ever doing anything in the way of enforcing the law in respect of lights on pedal cycles. (The nearest thing was stopping and warning the rider of a Honda 50 whose lights had failed in deepest Hunslet. The following night he came by again in an action replay and I took his name and address. I can still remember his name after some 43 years (but data protection concerns mean I'll just say his initials were RMH.) I also remember his reply under caution "Anybody can see this on here" and this forerunner of your argument was true. It cut no ice with a young PC 153 and none with Leeds Magistrates' Court.)

Once upon a time, maintaining decent lights on a bike was expensive in batteries and the lights were congenitally unreliable and poor when they were working they were generally pretty poor. That's no longer the case.

I'm frankly bored of having my ear bent by all the people I meet who think I have some personal responsibility for cyclists who ride without lights but I'd be slow to call them self-righteous. (I suppose if I had taken an interest in this as a young bobby, things might be different now, at least in South Leeds.) The riposte that many more drivers ignore the lighting regulations than cyclists tends to fall on deaf ears. (Point of information: a car parked on the road at night must be on the 'correct' side of the road and needs lights unless it is in a 30mph or less and not within 15 yards of a junction. Foglamps etc less than 2' from the floor can only be used in conditions of fog or falling snow, ditto rear fog lamps, headlamps must be extinguished when a car is stationary except in queuing traffic and there's probably a lot more. I couldn't offer 'proof' that any of this contributes to road safety.)

It's no secret that I think that cyclists would have a lot to gain from robust enforcement of road traffic law. Anybody being selective about what should be enforced runs the risk of being called a hypocrite.
........

Incidentally, does somebody on the receiving end of the 'Ninja' shout understand what it's about. If somebody shouted that at me, I'd assume it was a mistaken comment about my hair colour, but then I'm sufficiently self-righteous never to ride without lights. (Or at least, not since they have been so reliable. )

@snibgo

I'm not questioning the legality, I'm questioning the basic principle.

Do motorists really need us to be using better and better lighting and hi-vis so that we become visible to them?
If this is true then the question has got to be; why have things been allowed to reach this state?
If it isn't then are we simply deluding ourselves?

My experience on the road suggests that uber lighting and hi-vis makes no difference. I have an uber lighting set up on my MTB and a pair of cheap flashers on my normal commuting bike. I have just as many people not seeing me on either.
To many motorists a well lit cyclist, wearing hi-vis is a predictable life form and they'll treat us as such.
On the other hand a ninja is unpredictable, they get more space and overtaken with more care because of it. (Try riding with crap lights and dark clothing, you might be surprised.)

Motorists want to treat the roads as mini-motorways, they don't want to have to think. Ninjas wake them up and force them to, they then write their "disgusted of Warrington" letters to the local rag.

Lighting and hi-vis are similar to cycle paths, they force cyclists into neat easy to predict niches that motorists are happy with and that's all it's about, motorists being happy. Not safety, safety is just an afterthought. If we're forced to wear helmets it won't be because their safer, it'll be because your average car driving fool thinks we should, ditto if hi-vis becomes compulsory, if it makes them happier then we'll end up doing it.

We might think we're free tootling along on our bicycles but in reality were all dancing to the motorists tune.

thirdcrank wrote:
This is pretty sharp language about people you don't agree with. I know you have strong opinions on this and fair enough, so I'll not try to convince you but I'll tell you my own position.

Thirdcrank, I'm not aiming my comment at anyone in particular, more at cyclists in general.
(Although I admit in retrospect I could have chosen my words better).

The post I've made above outlines my issue with lighting, hi-vis and the rest.
As you say good lights are cheap and people most definitely should be using them, but I do feel there's an unjustified condemnation of our ninja brethren with scarcely a jot of proof that not having lights is in any way more dangerous than having them.

You only have to read all the threads on bigger and bigger lighting sets people post to see the way it's going. Soon we'll be having discussion like this one when we see someone with only 1W of lighting because to read some threads someone who isn't lit up like a Christmas tree with a light on every appendage and enough lighting power on the front to make a passable version of a rally car is risking their life. It's just not true and shouldn't be encouraged, what we should be doing is concentrating on making car drivers pay more attention rather than giving them more excuses not to bother.

kwackers wrote:Do motorists really need us to be using better and better lighting and hi-vis so that we become visible to them?
If this is true then the question has got to be; why have things been allowed to reach this state?
If it isn't then are we simply deluding ourselves?

These are good questions, and important. I don't know the answers. I wish I did.

I suspect the answers will vary according to the road conditions. Do motorists go on autopilot here? Are they generally in a rush? Do motorists expect to find cyclists there?

And there may be an "expert cyclist" effect; if I wear the gear and am predictable, I get less room. I regard this as unproven, but I acknowledge it may be true.

My least comfortable cycling is on a fast single-carriageway unlit A-road. Further up, where it is dual-carriageway, a cyclist was killed one evening a couple of weeks ago.

With an ordinary rear light or two, an ordinary front light, and a hi-vis vest, I haven't yet had any problems (touch wood).

My judgement is that riding here with no lights would be very dangerous, but I don't need any more. I might be better off without the hi-vis vest, as that clearly identifies me as a cyclist rather than something mysterious, so it might give me closer clearances. OTOH it will help motorists realise I move far more slowly than they do.

I fear that when 99% of cyclists look like Christmas trees, this will increase the risk for the rest of us.

flat tyre wrote:

piedwagtail91 wrote:riding without lights is just about as stupid as it gets. three cyclists were in front of me last week on an unlit country road, it was impossible to see them.

And so, what happened? One assumes that you mowed them down.

i don't have a car so i was on my bike at the time so it would have been difficult to mow them down with damaging my bike , so no i left them to it and told em to get some lights, no reports in the newspaper so i expect they got away without injury.

i have good lights on my bike,two at the front and two at the back,one reason is to see where i'm going on unlit roads and hopefully to be seen, the other for insurance and compensation if i do get knocked off.

if you've no lights on, get knocked off and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair and get little or no compensation as a result it'll leave you with plenty of time to think about the £5-10 lights which 'could possibly' have made all the difference to either being knocked off in the first place or getting adequate compen..

i honestly couldn't care less about people being fined, motorists have to be treated as totally stupid whether it's day or night if you want to stay in one piece on the roads.
i'm just giving them one less excuse.

I didn't realise you could get a FPN for cycling with no lights & frankly I think it is far too heavy handed. Given the paperwork & time involved in it all it would be far more effective in every aspect for the police to hand out free basic light systems to each cyclist they stop & making the cyclist fit them to the bike before been allowed on their way. Given how cheaply they can be bought direct from manufacturers if th governmet were that bothered about the problem they could hand out thousands of them across the country so that they were worthless on the 2nd hand market.
A FPN is far beyond what is called for and really not relative to the fines handed out for dangerous transgressions by motorised vehicle users.

I advocate using lights a) because at night I want to be able to see where I'm going or enhance what I need to see on the road ahead & B) because I cannot trust in every fellow motorist to be able to see me even though as Snibgo stated you should only drive at a speed that enables you to stop in a distance you can see to be clear. This is emphasised in advance driving.

No comment

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.

My two pence worth:-

The coppers acted in a reasonable manner and the option about buying a set of cheap lights is a positive move. Hopefully the names were taken so that when they're next stopped with 100% flat batteries in their 'get out of jail free' lights, this may be followed up.

Cyclists fined for no lights.

IMO. What's the problem? No complaints from me.

It's also part of the annual ritual to have a story in the local rag and on the local radio (indeed the point is mainly to have the story). That is partly to encourage a few forgetful people to remember to dig out their lights, and have a slightly wider effect than 80 or so FPNs.

This year there was a slight variation - one idiot decided to react violently, and was dealt with accordingly. First time that's happened.

Richard

kwackers wrote:Lighting and hi-vis are similar to cycle paths, they force cyclists into neat easy to predict inches that motorists are happy with and that's all it's about, motorists being happy.

Fixed that for you

My grief is the number of cars I see lit up like a motorbike...

But to be honest in my years commuting in the dark I wasn't particularly cyclist aware (although I like to think I was driving with due care) and only had one memorable ninja incident, and that was nowhere near a collision.

I probably failed to see many pavement ninjas, but the only road ninja I can recall (I only saw when he obscured the lights of an oncoming car, and couldn't pick him out when the car had gone past) was crossing the road, and well out of the road by the time I got to where he had been.

Getting back to the original post, I applaud Reading's boy-in-blue for the initiative. To cancel the fine within seven days if lights are purchased strikes me as being very fair.

I'm guessing they've taken a different line with cyclist who had lights fitted, but the batteries had perhaps failed unexpectedly, as they tend to do in colder weather, for example. But if a bike has NO lights, they've not made any effort to comply with the law (which I'm assuming nobody is still above). I dare say someone driving a car with no lights fitted would not be treated any more lightly.

A blown bulb, failed batteries etc, regardless of vehicle type, would not be treated harshly unless a repeat 'offender'.

Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I drive and I cycle and comply with the rules of the road, and have yet to be treated any differently on/in either vehicle. I'd expect to be treated more harshly if I commit an offence in the car, it being a higher potential killing machine, and I wouldn't mind betting that's generally the case.

kwackers wrote:The post I've made above outlines my issue with lighting, hi-vis and the rest.
As you say good lights are cheap and people most definitely should be using them, but I do feel there's an unjustified condemnation of our ninja brethren with scarcely a jot of proof that not having lights is in any way more dangerous than having them.

It is a hard thing to prove because cycling is so safe. Very few cyclists are hit by cars at night whether lit or unlit. I expect most ninjas ride in 30mph limits where lights are not essential because drivers can see then under the street lighting. In 30mph limits drivers also expect unlit peds and have more time to react if they see cyclists or peds late. Like many things it won't matter most of the time but will make a difference on that 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 occasion.

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.

How anyone can suggest that being clearly visible at night is not better than wearing dark matt colours is beyond me. Perhaps the army should return to crimson tunics on the battlefield?

irc wrote:How anyone can suggest that being clearly visible at night is not better than wearing dark matt colours is beyond me. Perhaps the army should return to crimson tunics on the battlefield?

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.