Ah, the refrain beloved of drivers using phones, among others. As noted above, the lights aren’t solely there for the benefit of the rider: they’re also to help prevent collisions where pedestrians step in front of a bicycle or where someone is joining a road at a T-junction where the bicycle is approaching from the side.

Besides, where does your “not your business” philosophy stop? If you see someone attempting to burgle a house would you object to anyone intervening on the grounds that it’s not their business?

Well, for instance, some people haven’t thought about things from others’ point of view (see above), so their “common sense” is flawed for a start. “Common sense” is always subjective, and inherently based on a certain perspective. As you point out, many people don’t exercise it, whatever it is (because your definition of it will differ from mine and anyone else’s). And that’s precisely why we have laws for this sort of thing.

Well done you on showing everyone you’re Very Good at [your] Common Sense, though: have a biscuit 😉

You seem to be assuming a “hit from behind” collision.

That is guff. I turned right at a t-junction once on a unlit road and a ninja cyclist, all in black with no lights splattered into the side of me. How am I to see him when I am at a junction with lights facing forward and he rides out of the dark at a 90 degree angle. If I had killed him that would have remained with me forever.

Ah, the “Darwinism über alles” ideology. Not sure if facetiousness or sociopathy.

Strange. It’s almost as if I wrote something and then you completely failed to understand it in any way, shape or form.

You should talk to a psychologist about that

So the other morning when I was walking the spaniel (who has a flashing collar on so he can be seen), a cyclist came passed, dressed in black and the only light on her bike was a red flashing one at the front?

What fine should this idiot get!

I’m well up for fining people, as the number of people I’ve seen without lights is frankly ridiculous. It’s evolution waiting to happen

However, I’m not entirely compliant myself. I have a rear reflector on my commuter, but no front reflector and no pedal reflectors. I have 2 lights on front and rear, with more as backup, and I’m usually wearing something with reflectives (as well as reflective bits on bike like marathon plus tyres and spoke reflectors)

I was caught out on Monday, didnt get out of work till 6.15 and it was full on dusk. had rear light but very concious of no front…felt horrible.

full nuclear exposure loadout is now in operation

You wonder if some people really want to live.

I nearly hit a guy on a roundabout last week. Motocross bike, no indicators and very shit light. (clearly not road legal – no reg plate either). I heard him so took a second/third look and realised there was a bike there and he was coming all the way around.

Not so the van driver next to me, who just pulled out right in from of him. He managed to swing around behind him and roared off, I assume for a clean pair of trousers.

(sorry – I am kind of assuming it was a bloke, I guess it oculd have been a female person)

Crazy last night, literally half a dozen while driving home, zero lights, well and truly dark and beyond the point of being caught out with it getting dark a bit earlier.

Though most were in lit areas but one I nearly ran over out in the countryside, and was only that he had pedal reflectors that I even spotted him.

Though to be fair my bikes don’t have pedal reflectors being a mountain bike, and I get on people’s tits by not having hi-vis 😀 , but then again I have retina burning lights and I’m only on the road for brief periods.

Oh, and non had helmets (so if they got run over, clearly their fault 😉 )

You did see them then because you counted them; so they weren’t rendered invisible…..and from your tone am I safe in assuming you managed not to run over any of them?

Come on. You must be able to understand that not having lights doesn’t *always* render you invisible, it renders you *less* visible, which means that in some cases you may not be noticed.

Do some thinking before you spout off. Or better still stop trying to pursue arguments you must know are spurious just to win arguments.

I think this has been expressed already – I don’t want the inconvenience of scraping them off my bumper because they can’t be bothered to follow the law. Let alone any psychological impact hitting them might have.

But, edging towards devil’s advocacy, you can minimise the risk of that inconvenience that by not driving such that you can’t stop within the space you can see to be clear. This then also works for people on foot, wayward children, parked or broken-down vehicles, deer, land mines and so on. The main car-bicycle collision mode where an unlit bicycle can’t be accounted for is the T-junction example, where the impact speed is (a) determined by the person who stands to suffer the injury and (b) much less likely to prove fatal.

So for those making the (quite reasonable) point about cyclists approaching from the side outside the beam of your headlights. How important do you consider rear lights on bicycles to be for road safety? Does a cyclist not having a rear light provide a driver with an excuse for running them over in any circumstances?

Let’s do a test – everyone that is advocating that it is OK to ride around without lights should do so for the duration of this winter and then we can see if everyone is still around next summer, which would indicate that the strategy is sound.

Good.
It’s not excessive, it’s just that other penalties, for things that are far more likely to affect others, are so trivial.

Have you put any thought at all into whether a driver should be able to see a cyclist whether or not they have a rear light before writing that rant, taxi?

I did say minimise, not eliminate…

80 years ago it was. It only became socially frowned upon when cars became significantly faster, and people started driving faster than their headlights could keep up with, resulting in them crashing into a lot more stuff. “This is no good,” they said, “how can we be expected not to crash into things when we can’t see them?” and so bicycles acquired rear lights. We’ve continued with that theme ever since, and motor vehicles—with their continuing ability to outpace their own illumination—have become ever more dominant, which is why most people consider it laughable today.

(And no, I’m not arguing that people should ride around in the dark without lights, or that everyone should drive everywhere at under 40mph once darkness falls, but that’s how we cane to be where we are today.)