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It's a horrible feeling when you give a cursory check to your rear light about 8 miles in on a dark ride into work only to find that the usual bright, glowing, beacon of safety has simply gone!
No idea when, where, or how, but I'll be carrying a spare from now on - lesson learnt.
Sorry for your loss, hope it wonn't be too expensive to replace.
Any close calls from cars or drivers letting you know they couldn't see you?
Done the same. Found nothing but a bracket when I got home. Still it'd better than the commuter I saw with the rear seat post light hidden behind a mudguard!
I always ride with two. Good rear lights are not expensive now. Two Cateye Rapid 1's are £30, plus £8 for a saddle rail mount and £5 for the rack mount. Small, robust and USB rechargeable.
I have a third backup light integral to the rear mudguard as well.
never ride with only one front and one rear light, two on both ends, you never know when a light will fail. Well you do, it will be cold, raining and blowing a gale!
Always ride with two on the bike & one on the helmet.
I'd like to think that I'm not the only one to nearly fall off trying to see if the rear is working while riding as well 😳
Not one horn nor any abuse - which really surprised me as there were plenty of cars around this morning and I ride on some completely unlit roads. As soon as I realised I was pavement riding for the rest of the journey.
I'm just thankful I wasn't hit to be honest. The stupid thing is I have a couple of spare lights in a drawer at home, no use to me there though!
I had a battery fail on a rear light a few years back and it was dim, a bus driver opened his doors as he passed and told me so, I didnt know what he was on about till I got the traffic lights and thought I'd look over my bike and see if anything was wrong. From then on I have always tried to have a back up front and back light. and my hobby is to catch riders with absolutely no lights and tell them: 'mate, get some decent lights'. 😉
Yup, always have two at each end. As well as redundancy, it gives you the option to run both "legal" and "good" lights side by side. Also, you can pair up lights that are highly visible from the sides and the front/rear.
Yep, always use two lights and have recently swapped to rechargable batteries, so I can just regularly top them up, rather than wait until 'normal' batteries go flat.
I got back from a ride recently and while both lights were on, they were significantly dimmer than they should have been. They were bloomin' bright when i started the ride though, which made me realise with LEDs it is quite hard to judge when the batteries are dying.
Decided rechargables are the way forward.
And yep I always use two rear lights; one flashing and one solid. Be very unfortunate if they both ran out completely on a ride.
Yup,always two lights and a few flashy ones from Aldi/Tesco that bounce about on my rucksack.
They usually last all winter on the same batteries .
Someone drove along side me the other week to tell me my rear light had failed. Bloody good of him I thought
I guess it's an age thing. If you're old enough to have used those Ever Ready (totally the wrong name) back lights, you will still be checking your lights every few minutes.
I guess it's an age thing. If you're old enough to have used those Ever Ready (totally the wrong name) back lights, you will still be checking your lights every few minutes.
You would, however, not have the OP's problem of the thing disappearing - you'd notice the second one of them ones fell off 'cos the bike would be noticeably lighter...
Once I was on a long touring ride in deepest darkest wales (welshpool). Unbeknown to me at the time my rear light battery had diminished as I probably left it on in the shed on the previous ride. So it got dark and when I came to turn it on found the button did nothing. I was about 10 miles or so from my B&B and so rode the road in the dark, being as safe as possible and stopping whenever I heard cars coming up behind me and/or stepping onto the verge, took me ages. About a mile from the house a police car (hello hedlu!) stopped me and asked what I was doing? It was raining heavily by now so I explained the situation and then he drove slowly behind me lighting me up for other cars for the last mile or so while I panned it to the house. Great Service! (thank you hedlu)