Effective Cycling

Whenever you leave on a trip, consider whether you will need to ride in the dark at any time. If that is likely, inspect and pack or fit your nighttime safety equipment so that it will be ready when required. Never ride at night without the proper protective equipment. Riding when you cannot see or be seen is foolish and dangerous.

Riding at night is more dangerous than riding in the daylight, as is driving or walking at night. However, the increase in danger is not sufficiently great to prohibit nighttime riding for either business or pleasure, provided that you take the proper precautions in both equipment and behavior. I particularly enjoy riding on country roads on warm summer nights with the warm glow of my headlamp lighting up the road ahead in a quietly mysterious way. Cars can be heard and seen for miles across the quiet countryside, and in my experience motorists have always seen me in plenty of time to steer smoothly around me. I haven’t heard the squealing brakes or tires, or seen the sudden swinging of headlight beams, that would show that a driver saw me only at the last moment.

Darkness increases the accident rate for both cyclists and motorists. Not only is it harder to see, but (among motorists, at least) the incompetence level rises at night; there are more drunken and more tired drivers, and more joyriding. To counter these dangers, the cyclist ought to use the best technique and the most effective equipment, but the American cyclist is confused by the conflict between greatly exaggerated fears of nighttime cycling and the national laziness in facing the problem. On one hand, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), urged on by part of the U.S. bicycle industry and the reflector manufacturers, maintains the irresponsible position that wide-angle reflectors make it safe to ride at night, specifically by “providing adequate visibility to motorists under low-light conditions.” On the other hand, the safety freaks, recognizing that the all-reflector system is dangerously inadequate, advocate more reflectors, additional reflective material, flashing beacons, and headlamps powered by heavy, expensive storage batteries. In the confusion, the typical cyclist doesn’t understand that cheap, convenient, and effective equipment is available and should be used.

The most frequent types of car-bike collisions caused by darkness are those that bicycle headlamps would prevent. These are all those in which the motorist should have yielded to an approaching cyclist but did not do so because he didn’t see the cyclist approaching. In view of how few American cyclists use headlamps at night, it is no surprise that not using a headlamp at night is the greatest cause of car-bike collisions caused by darkness. Reflectors rarely work in this situation, because the bicycle doesn’t enter the motorist’s headlight beams until too late to prevent the collision; if the car moves fast, it gets in front of the cyclist and the cyclist hits the car without ever getting in the car’s headlight beams. These situations are shown in figure 33.1.

Figure 33.1

Lights at night. The cyclist needs a headlamp, not side or front reflectors. Reflectors enter the motorist’s headlight beams too late to avoid a collision, but the motorist can see the cyclist’s headlamp as the cyclist approaches.

Cyclists also have the legal obligation to inform pedestrians and other cyclists that they are approaching. Cyclists also need to be able to see where they are going. Failure to use a headlamp has caused serious and fatal bike-bike, bike-pedestrian, and single-bike accidents.

The only other type of car-bike collision probably caused by darkness is the car-overtaking-bike collision in which the motorist says the cyclist was not seen until too late, if at all. In nearly every case, particularly if the motorist was driving lawfully with properly aligned headlamps, the motorist’s headlights would have effectively illuminated a powerful and properly located rear reflector. Therefore, such a reflector, or a reasonably bright rear lamp, is the appropriate equipment countermeasure for this type of car-bike collision.

Nighttime protective equipment should enable you to use, during darkness, the same effective cycling techniques that have been proved safe during daylight. Your behavior should change only to compensate for the difference between headlamp light and daylight. As far as traffic is concerned, notice that the rules of the road do not change with darkness. The rules of the road describe the safest reasonable relationship between drivers, and we apply this relationship in both daylight and darkness. The only difference is that in darkness, we must identify vehicles by their lights or by their reflectors illuminated by our own headlamp beams. Because you can see only shorter distances ahead, a lower speed is advisable for nighttime driving. Unlighted objects can be seen only when in the headlamp beams. If they are reflectorized they can be seen at considerable distances, but if they are not reflectorized they can be seen only at much shorter distances than in daylight. Both motorists with lawful headlights and cyclists with weak headlamps can easily overdrive their headlamps and should travel slower than in daylight, but a cyclist with an adequate headlamp can maintain level-road speed in the dark, provided that he keeps his eyes on the tip of the beam. This gives him just enough time to avoid the primary unlighted, unreflectorized hazards: ridges or slots, slippery patches, rocks and potholes, riding off the edge of the road, and pedestrians in situations where they have the right-of-way.

The proper functions of nighttime protective equipment are to illuminate your path so you may ride on the roadway and stay away from obstacles, to enable you to see your position on the roadway so you can obey the rules of the road, and to alert other drivers and pedestrians so they may obey the rules of the road with respect to you.

The equipment necessary to meet these requirements varies somewhat with conditions. For example, with good street lighting and well-surfaced streets, there is sufficient ambient light to illuminate the cyclist’s path adequately so that the equipment need only alert other drivers and pedestrians. On the other hand, cycling along a path with poor surface, or with nasty turns that can be negotiated only slowly even in daylight, requires a battery-powered lamp that is unusually bright at low speeds.

Don’t incorrectly and illegally assume that you can get by without lights because you plan to stay out of the way of the cars when you see their headlights first. Cars are not the only danger, and you are responsible for the safety of others also. On the Stanford campus, two reflectorized but unlighted cyclists met at a dark intersection. One died. In Eugene, another university town, two unlighted cyclists were riding along the white line because that was all they could see in the dark. The trouble was that they were riding in opposite directions. Now one is permanently paralyzed. In Santa Barbara, a high-school student rode home at late dusk without a headlamp. While descending from a freeway overpass at 20–25 mph, he hit a pedestrian who had almost crossed the road but didn’t see the cyclist. The pedestrian suffered smashed face and jaw bones; the cyclist is in a wheelchair for life. The cyclist sued the state but, quite properly, he lost. In Boulder, a very bright graduate student left his laboratory to descend a hill on his way home. On the descent, a motorist coming up the hill couldn’t see him because he had no light. The motorist turned left into a driveway and the cyclist hit him. Now the most difficult mental work that that cyclist can do is washing dishes in a restaurant. The cyclist sued the city for the lack of the bike lane but, quite properly, he lost.

All commonly available headlamps are electric. For practical purposes, any lamp capable of illuminating the path ahead is sufficiently bright to notify motorists and pedestrians of your approach, which is all that is necessary to enable them to obey the rules of the road. The most obvious situation is when you are riding along an arterial street and a motorist is waiting at a stop sign. The lamp must inform the motorist that you are coming, so the motorist will stay stopped until you have passed. Your headlamp doesn’t need to be so bright that it can be easily noticed among car headlamps, because if cars are near you, other motorists will wait for them. If no cars are near, your headlamp is easily seen. To be absolutely certain of alerting motorists coming from every dangerous angle, the headlamp should be visible as far as 70º to each side as well as from ahead, and modern lamps have lenses designed to distribute sufficient light in these directions. A 3-watt incandescent lamp can be seen for several blocks ahead, even amid the glare of accompanying car headlights, and from at least one block from the sides, which is certainly far enough. Modern LED lamps do better still.

For protection from the rear, the situation is different. Overtaking collisions are caused by motor vehicles that have headights and whose drivers are required to limit their speed according to how far they can see ahead. However, motorists frequently overdrive their headlights. Highway and vehicle reflectors compensate for this error by returning the light directly toward the car, instead of merely scattering it in all directions as other materials do. Therefore, the motorist sees them as bright lights, even at distances at which everything else is black. Red reflectors meeting the old Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) standard J79 are theoretically adequate for these conditions, but practical experience suggests they are not quite bright enough.

Reflector brightness is controlled by technology, design distance, size, and color. New-technology reflectors are brighter than old-technology reflectors. Reflectors brightest at great distances (1,000 feet) are not brightest at medium distances (300 feet). Reflector brightness varies directly with area for reflectors up to about 6 inches in diameter. Amber reflectors are about 62 percent as bright as clear ones, but red reflectors are only 25 percent as bright as clear. The original reflectors meeting the SAE J79 standard were red and 2 inches in diameter. A few are still in use on bicycles.

The best choice for a bicycle is a new-technology, medium-distance, large, amber reflector. (Clear would give a white reflection, which would give the false indication of an approaching vehicle.) These characteristics are readily available in the 3-inch-diameter reflectors sold in auto accessory stores. You have to buy these at auto accessory stores because the CPSC prohibits bicycle shops from selling them. Although the new reflectors are marked “SAE” like the old ones, even the red ones are several times brighter than the older models. The amber reflectors are about eight times brighter than standard bicycle rear or pedal reflectors. They are so bright that they are visible with much less headlamp illumination than pedal reflectors, despite the pedal reflectors’ movement.

I see no reason for choosing any other rear nighttime equipment. I used the 3-inch red old-technology reflectors for thirty years, and never noticed any sign that motorists had not seen me in plenty of time. I now use the 3-inch new-technology amber reflectors, because they provide more brightness for the same cost, weight, drag, and trouble.

The most deceitful claim about headlamps is that you don’t need one. That claim was made by the CPSC at the urging of the Bicycle Manufacturers Association (BMA), on the basis of no testing at all. (They tested reflectors for optical reflectivity, but not for ability to prevent collisions, which is the desired function that we know they cannot meet.) The manufacturers didn’t want to supply headlamps and were frightened that the government would force them to do so. As a result, bicycles are required to be sold with dangerously defective nighttime equipment, instead of either with none or with proper equipment. Now both the CPSC and the BMA unofficially say that using headlamps is a good idea, but those quiet statements haven’t changed the regulation.

The next worst piece of misinformation about headlamps is that the common types are ineffective and only heavy, complicated, and expensive types are worth using. For normal cycling on well-lit streets (the typical kind of cycling done at night), even the simplest battery-powered LED headlamp will alert other drivers and pedestrians of the cyclist’s approach. For all roadway cycling at reasonable speeds, we used to find that the 3-watt generator incandescent headlamp was adequate. On country roads where it is very dark, such headlamps are good for up to 30 mph. To the cyclist intent on observing his path, they appear less effective where other lights interfere, probably because the cyclists’ eyes are less sensitive (less dark-adapted) under these conditions, but then the other lights provide some vision also. However, where you need a wide beam to see around sharp corners, or bright light at low speeds (typical bike path conditions), you need both more watts and battery power. This is where the heavy, expensive, complicated lamps are required.

Some people advocate rear lamps, either steady or flashing. Because a rear lamp can go out, and generator-powered rear lamps go out whenever you stop, it must have a backup reflector. Because a well-chosen rear reflector by itself prevents nearly all the potential collisions, there are very few collisions that the additional rear lamp could prevent. So there is little reason for carrying a rear lamp with its greater cost, trouble, weight, complexity, and power consumption. However, the new LED rear lamps use so little power for adequate brightness that they make a useful choice.

Some people advocate flashing rear lamps because these are visible from much greater distances for a given power consumption. The argument is foolish, because motorists don’t base their steering commands on what they see far ahead. They steer according to what they see several hundred feet ahead, a visibility distance requirement well satisfied by less complex equipment. Flashing lights also have a serious disadvantage. Particularly at night, we estimate distances by relative movement between object and surroundings. Interruptions in the light seriously impair this ability, so motorists are less certain about the position of a flashing light than a steady one. Many motorists certainly give more clearance than necessary, which is useless and a nuisance to others, but some inevitably err the other way and therefore have a greater chance of hitting the cyclist. Drivers who have been drinking appear particularly susceptible to this befuddlement. (This is one theory put forth to explain why so many drunks drive into police cars stopped with their lights flashing.) For all these reasons, I do not advocate flashing lights.

Some argue that the rear reflector is insufficiently bright. A pseudoscientific study was produced to support this claim in an accident case. An aged motorist who had lived his entire life in one rural house and spent his entire working life with one rural employer was driving home from work in a pickup truck with headlamps that were aligned too low. This motorist couldn’t see where he was going but could steer from memory by the outline of the trees against the sky—a most unusual situation. While driving like this, he hit a cyclist from behind.

The investigator calculated the amount of light returned by the old SAE J79 reflector under a wide variety of conditions. His calculations showed that under most conditions, even this old reflector was adequate. Then the investigator changed his mind and said that because a motorist won’t be looking where he is going, to attract his attention we need to send back 1,000 times more light than is needed just to be seen, which would require a reflector about 5 feet in diameter. This is absurd; nearly all motorists spend most of their time looking at the road ahead to see where they are going, particularly at night when all there is to see is whatever is illuminated by the headlight beams. The motorist spends most of his time looking along his headlight beams at precisely where the cyclist will first appear; we don’t have to attract his attention from elsewhere.

The next absurd study was done by Dunlap and Associates for the U.S. government, with some assistance from the investigator who had made the preceding calculations. They tested a variety of obsolete and peculiar equipment, but not the better reflectors that had been available for years, and they made the same mistake by assuming that the motorist wouldn’t be looking where he was going. The results are useless.

An entirely untested claim is that moving rear-facing pedal reflectors are more readily seen than relatively stationary rear reflectors. This argument has two errors. The first is that it fails to consider that a proper rear reflector, being much larger, is four to seven times brighter than the pedal reflector. The second is that it makes the same assumption that the motorist isn’t looking where he is going. Movement doesn’t make an object any more visible if you are looking at it; it only causes you to look at it if you weren’t already looking at it. Clearly, the motorist looking ahead along his headlight beams will see the relatively stationary but brighter normal reflector sooner than he will the moving but dimmer pedal reflector.

The only useful and accurate tests that I know of were made in Britain and are reported Pedal Cycle Lamps and Reflectors—Some Visibility Tests and Surveys, by G. B. Watts (Report 1108, Transport and Road Research Laboratory, 1984). One of Watts’s tests was to position a cyclist waiting alongside the centerline for a right turn (equivalent to an American left—the British drive on the left) alongside a car coming from the opposite direction with its headlights on. A test driver drove up behind the cyclist and recorded the distance at which he noticed the cyclist’s rear equipment. Even with the glare of the oncoming headlights, both reasonable reflectors and reasonable rear lamps gave sufficient visibility distance for safe driving. Watts tested equipment available in British stores under actual difficult service conditions, and equipment that is not quite as good as what I recommend passed the test.

There is also a prevalent public belief that cyclists should advertise that they are riding bicycles by using pedal and wheel reflectors (not used by any other vehicle). One argument says that because motorists don’t expect cyclists, they aren’t looking for cyclists and won’t see them unless they use some special attention-grabbing device. This is the foolish cyclist-inferiority superstition in a particularly absurd garb. Particularly at night, when motorists often don’t identify particular types of vehicle, this argument makes no sense; whether or not they expect cyclists, motorists intend to avoid colliding with objects that have red or amber lights. If they see the light from a lamp or a reflector, they will steer around it.

Another argument is that unless motorists identify a bicycle as a bicycle, they might believe that the reflectors they see are off the roadway, say on a parked car or a tree. This is also absurd. If a motorist thought that a cyclist’s reflector was an off-the-road object, the motorist would steer far left to avoid it, thereby going off the left side of the road. There is no evidence that motorists make this error.

Still another argument is that a motorist who identifies a vehicle as a bicycle will take special care not to hit it. This presumes that motorists drive along blithely hitting reflectorized objects that they recognize aren’t bicycles or that the motorist must do more to avoid a bicycle than to avoid a truck, a tractor, or a lighted excavation in the roadway.

Unfortunately, the curtate cycloidal movements of wheel reflectors and the vigorous oscillations of pedal reflectors have greatly impressed the general public. They think that because these reflectors look like advertising signs, they prevent car-bike collisions, which is an entirely false conclusion. It is like arguing that the golden arches prevent motorists from colliding with McDonald’s stands.

The true questions to be considered by an investigative motorist who sees a bicycle’s pedal or wheel reflectors at night are these:

• Is the cyclist operating properly and do I have the duty to yield to him? An improperly operating cyclist is in danger day or night; the reflectors make little difference. Only if I should yield to the cyclist can his equipment make any difference.

• Does a collision situation exist that I can avoid by seeing the pedal or wheel reflectors? If it doesn’t, as of course is nearly always true, the advertising performs no function. If it does, then the next question is:

• Would I see the bicycle early enough to avoid a collision if it had been properly equipped with headlamp and rear reflector? If I would see a properly equipped bicycle, then the advertising reflectors perform no function that is not performed better by the proper equipment.

The public doesn’t care sufficiently about these matters to consider such careful questions. It sees the wheel and pedal reflectors advertising the presence of improperly equipped bicycles and thinks that this must be a good thing, without considering the disadvantages.

The CPSC and some segments of the bicycle and reflector industries have committed four dangerous errors:

• Requiring the front and side reflectors that to the untrained eye look like effective substitutes for headlamps but cannot perform the required safety function

• Designing the rear reflector to work in directions from which cars don’t come. This makes the reflector too dim in the direction from which cars do come, almost directly from the rear.

• Requiring that the rear reflector be protected from all possibility of damage. This puts it where baggage hides it and mud from the rear wheel obscures its surface.

Many people have been hoodwinked by the CPSC and the BMA into believing that the CPSC all-reflector system is an excellent design for preventing nighttime car-bike collisions. Every new bicycle is equipped with one front, one rear, four wheel, and four pedal reflectors. The idea behind the system is that a bicycle will be safe if it has reflectors all around it, so that any car that approaches the bicycle, from whatever angle, will shine its headlights onto a reflector and the motorist will then steer to miss the bicycle. Because a reflector will operate only over about 40º, doing this with ordinary reflectors would require 10 to 12 reflectors, each set at a specific angle. The answer was to use only four directions of reflectors (front, right, rear, left) but to make each reflector a set of three reflectors, so that each set of three would operate over a little more than 90º. Then the four sets of reflectors would cover the complete circle. To cut the costs, some smart mold designer developed a mold that would form the three reflectors in one piece at little more than the cost of a single reflector. The catch, though, is that each reflector is only one-third the size of the full set, so that the wide-angle reflector is only one-third as bright in any direction as a plain reflector of the same size. That reflector design was announced as a great invention that made cycling at night safe. Many people were taken in by the rhetoric and still praise the wide-angle reflector’s performance without considering that the only reason for making wide-angle reflectors was to cover a full circle at the cost of only four reflectors. Because the full-circle concept isn’t a good idea, the wide-angle reflector isn’t a good idea.

The full-circle reflector idea would be fine if the cyclist were a statue at the center of a traffic circle, but it forgets that bicycles move and it forgets the actual traffic pattern and traffic law. The CPSC made (or perhaps merely attended) only one demonstration of its all-reflector system. The test was done as specified by the BMA, in the driveway of the CPSC, at night. A car was parked with its headlight beams shining along the driveway. The observers stood adjacent to the car. A bicycle was held stationary in the headlight beams, and the man supporting it gradually rotated it 360º. The observers agreed that at all times at least one reflector was shining at them. When I demanded in court that the CPSCdisclose the scientific basis for its all-reflector system, the CPSC lied. It told the court that it had considered the facts, as written in 800 pages among the thousands of pages of its records on this regulation. The truth was that the only sentence in those 800 pages that even remotely considered solutions for reducing nighttime car-bike collisions (and it never considered bike-pedestrian or bike-bike collisions) remarked that improvements in reflectorization or illumination, no details even suggested, might reduce the nighttime accident rate. That offhand remark and the driveway demonstration are the entire basis for the U.S. nighttime bicycle safety program. The CPSC should be sued whenever someone who relies on its system is killed or injured as a result.

Because a bicycle moves, it can move into a car’s headlamp beams too late for the motorist to avoid the collision, or it can hit the car, a pedestrian, or another cyclist. Only a headlamp can be relied upon to notify motorists, pedestrians, or other cyclists approaching a collision from ahead or from side streets. The only other direction from which nighttime car-bike collisions occur is from directly behind, an angle at which the motorist’s headlights practically always shine on the bicycle. The only reflector that can do any good is the rear one, and it needs to reflect only over a rather narrow arc, considerably less than 20º on each side of the centerline. This performance is provided by the SAE reflector that provides full reflective area up to 20º on each side of center, and is available in large size, amber color, and new technology. Considering the rear reflector alone, the CPSC and the bicycle industry chose new technology, great distance, small size, and red color; except for new technology (and who would choose old?), these are exactly the wrong choices.

The arguments for the scientifically unfounded CPSC and BMA positions have consumed far too much public and private time, and the delay has caused far too many casualties. The combination of intellectual absurdity and passionate presentation shows once again the depths and strengths of the fears produced by the cyclist inferiority complex.

An unwanted side effect of the full-circle, all-reflector concept is the position of the rear reflector. To make the full-circle system work, each reflector must be positioned within a few degrees of its nominal position, which means that the front and rear reflectors had to be positioned where they would not get bent by hitting the ground when the bicycle was laid on its side. The only place for the rear reflector was just above the rear wheel. That is just where baggage hides it—even just a tool bag for short riders—and where mud from the wheel covers it. Instructions for mounting the rear reflector appear later in this chapter.

Another unwanted side effect of the propaganda for the full-circle, all-reflector system is the Christmas-tree syndrome. This is the concept that cyclists should be covered with reflective material—the more the better. Reflectorized saddlebags, trouser bands, helmets, shirts, flags, and more are marketed as safety equipment; individual cyclists argue for all of these and more, including white clothing. The concept is crazy. Reflective material works only for the particular driver who shines his headlights on you. As we have seen, front and side (wheel) reflectors often don’t enter headlight beams in time to prevent an accident, and in many cases there is no headlight beam to enter. A bicycle headlamp actually performs all the functions that these reflectors are supposed to perform, and more besides. If reflectors on the front and side of a bicycle don’t perform any useful function, then reflectors on bicycle equipment or the cyclist also won’t perform any useful function. Even to the rear, where reflective power does perform a necessary function, the rear reflector that is made for the task and properly mounted is brighter than most reflective materials (particularly after they have been used for a while). If it does its job, there is no reason for anything else. The recommendation for white clothing is worse than that for reflectorized clothing, because the white clothing is dimmer than reflectorized clothing except when considering illumination by streetlights. In any case, neither white nor reflectorized clothing is as bright as the proper rear reflector.

The first bicycle lamps were oil (kerosene, the fluid that started Rockefeller’s fortune). In 1900, the acetylene lamp was invented, generating its acetylene by slowly dropping water onto calcium carbide. When my parents were young cyclists, about 1914, slow cyclists who wanted convenience more than brightness used oil lamps, and fast cyclists who wanted more brightness were prepared to put up with the complications of acetylene lamps. I used one regularly in the 1950s, and I have several as museum pieces. In the 1920s, incandescent electric headlamps were developed, and the question for the individual cyclist was whether to use old-style dry cells or a generator powering a 3-watt headlamp. Some chose one; others the other. Then rechargeable batteries tilted the choice more toward batteries, but for serious lighting these were still bulky and heavy. Now LED lights produce five times more light for each unit of electricity than do incandescent bulbs. The modern bicycle headlamp uses LEDs as the light source, teamed with modern nickel-metal hydride (NiHM) rechargeable batteries (or, even better, lithium rechargeable batteries) as the power source.

I recommend a headlamp using one or two LEDs that are powered by standard NiHM cells of at least AA size. Use standard cells rather than some built-in battery because they can be replaced immediately, either because of failure, or because you have a very long nighttime ride to make. You don’t need to carry spare bulbs; indeed, the headlamp probably doesn’t allow for bulb replacement. Buy at least two sets of cells. Recharge the cells with a charger that detects full charge and cuts off charging. You do have to remember that NiHM cells slowly lose their charge. You can’t charge cells in June and expect to get any power when daylight savings time goes off in October. So charge a set of cells shortly before you expect to use them; with the charger that detects full charge and cuts off, even if the cells were 3/4 full, they won’t get overcharged. Then put the other set on charge, ready for you.

You need nighttime protective equipment only during darkness. Whether you leave this equipment permanently installed or fit it only for nighttime rides depends both on how frequently you wish to ride at night and on which bicycle you choose for nighttime cycling. Certainly, for bicycles that are used at night only occasionally, and for those that are used for sporting purposes, nighttime protective equipment should be easy-on, easy-off so that it is used when necessary but left at home when not desired. It should also be independent of carrier racks and mudguards, and not obscured by baggage or clothing—all items that change according to the weather and trip purpose. Naturally, the protective equipment should be located to give good optical performance.

The headlamp must turn with the steering assembly. With raised or flat handlebars, the headlamp may be mounted ahead of the handlebars, traditionally on a bracket that forms part of the upper head bearing. With dropped handlebars, this position is unsuitable; the light shines in your eyes. The common headlamp bracket fits on the front brake mounting bolt, giving a location just in front of the bottom head bearing. This position is also unsuitable if you use a handlebar bag or a rain cape, and the lamp may also shine in your eyes if you don’t equip it with a small screen, like the bill of a cap. The best place for a headlamp is on a front-fork blade, unless you use front panniers, in which case the headlamp should be on the pannier rack.

With the common battery lamps, the battery is in the lamp itself. Therefore, mounting the headlamp mounts the battery. The common mounting for a battery lamp is a clamp that is part of the lamp. The clamp will fit around a handlebar, a stem, or a front fork blade.

With some lamps, the batteries are in a separate container with a wire to reach the lamp. With these, the battery container can be mounted almost anywhere.

Any front-fork mounting has one problem. It must be kept tightly fastened, lest it rotate around the fork blade and jam the front spokes, pitching you over the handlebars. Don’t use it on round-fork blades, which are normally found on track bikes.

The reflector mounting situation is bad; only one item of any use is available. The legally required CPSC rear reflector bracket attaches the rear reflector to the brake, where it can be obscured by baggage or covered by dirt thrown up by the rear tire and cannot be easily installed for nighttime use. The only useful item available is the Cateye seatstay bracket, which provides a mounting hole for those bicycles without mudguard eyes. Because you are going to use a rear reflector much better than the lawfully available bicycle reflectors, don’t even bother to look for a type with an adaptable bracket. Some reflectors have no back, but rely upon a “watertight” gasket fitting to a smooth surface. Never use an unbacked reflector on a bicycle: the least bit of moisture on the back of a reflector makes it nonreflective. Many modem SAE-type reflectors have a waterproof plastic back with two ears for mounting bolts. Don’t mount these by one ear; they will break off after only a few hours on the road.

The rear reflector will attach to the left rear mudguard eye, or to a Cateye bracket clamped to the stay just above the dropout. Make a bracket out of about 6 inches of ⅛-inch round steel bar—⅛-inch weld rod is just fine and easily available. Bend one end into an eye to accept the mudguard bolt, which is generally 5 mm in diameter. Then bend the eye at an angle, so it will hold the reflector clear of the stays. If you use panniers, bend the bracket down, so the reflector will hang below the panniers. This setup also puts the reflector nearer the center of the lower beam from a car, so it is a good position. Then bend the outer 2 inches of the bracket to a right angle, with the plane of its two legs perpendicular to the fore-and-aft axis of the bicycle. Take off the bracket, and clean its outer 4 inches or more with steel wool. Buff and roughen the back of the reflector with steel wool also. Then epoxy the bracket to the reflector. Epoxy both legs of the bracket’s end angle to the reflector so that it can’t rotate—naturally, only after making sure that you have assembled the pair correctly so that the active face of the reflector faces the rear. When the epoxy glue has partly stiffened, mound it up over the steel bar to give the joint extra strength.

Adjust the lamp position while riding at normal speed in the dark away from streetlights. Bend the bracket so that the lamp beam points directly forward and the lamp mounting pivot is horizontal. Tighten the lamp bolt so you can just pivot the lamp. Then you can elevate or depress the beam while riding, to compensate for conditions. The faster you ride, the further ahead you need the beam; the darker the night, the further ahead you can see objects in the beam.

Battery lamps or separate generator lamps are adjusted by loosening the clamp bolt and turning the unit, with some twisting of the bracket as necessary.

Once you have got the adjustment right, find out if the light shines into your eyes. If it does, shield the light from your eyes by mounting a lampshade along the upper rim of the lamp. Beer-can aluminum and epoxy glue make a good shade.

Riding at night with proper headlamp and rear reflector is not much different from riding in the daylight. It is more important to ride where you will be seen, so avoid sidewalks and riding close to bushes and parked cars, and pay attention to riding in a straight line close to the moving cars. Both you and the motorists are using two sources of light—that which you produce and that which comes from streetlights and from other cars. Light from overhead is fine, but that from other headlights pointing at you simply confuses and blinds. Because a cyclist is not large enough to completely block other headlight beams, motorists looking at you with other headlights in the background can easily miss you in the glare. In daylight, it is poor policy to get stuck halfway across an intersection; at night, it is worse. At night, never enter an intersection unless you can get directly across it to a place of safety. Remember that your light is dim at slow speeds, so don’t put yourself in the position of having to be observed before you have picked up speed. When waiting to make a left turn, wait before you enter the intersection, not in it. In that position, only drivers from behind threaten you, and you are protected by your reflector. However, if several other motorists also wait for that turn in the intersection, you can go alongside them because they protect you from cars from the side and ahead.

There has been a lot of misinformation printed about how ineffective bicycle lamps are. Just trying a proper set will change your mind. Remember that in England, the 24-hour racers averaged 20 mph in the dark with old-fashioned battery lamps. (How else can you ride 509 miles in a day?) In France, the randonneur tourists ride 750 miles in less than 90 hours, and that takes some nighttime riding with generators. All over northern Europe, adults commute to work and children to school in the dark during winter, using standard bicycle lighting equipment. And there the police enforce the lighting laws—if you go out without a lamp, you get a citation.

On brightly lit city streets, you don’t need your light to see by, only to be seen by. You can ride at full daylight speed with only minor worry about being less visible. Just don’t get away from the bright lights with a lamp that doesn’t illuminate your path.

The problem is where there are bright lights at intersections, but not in between. Your eyes don’t become fully adapted to the dark, so you don’t see well in the dim section. Be extra careful in these half-lit areas. Rocks and holes that you think you ought to see easily show up suddenly as you run over them.

Protect your dark adaptation by never looking directly at bright lights. Look away from oncoming car headlights. Even half-close your eyes for a second when the car is nearest to you. (It is too late then to avoid a collision, anyway.) Prepare for this meeting by observing the curve of the road before the car meets you, so you know where to steer even though you cannot see the roadway.

At all costs, avoid riding all bike paths and those bike lanes that are used by pedestrians unless there is so much illumination that you can see unlighted persons without your headlamp. Your headlamp is not bright enough to illuminate people in dark clothing until far too late to avoid hitting them. I was riding in the dark in a bike lane on a main road without streetlights behind the Stanford campus. There were no cars in sight. Ahead I saw a little shining object dancing beside the edge of the road, obviously a jogger’s reflectorized leg band. No problem, I thought—easy to avoid her. When I was very close, purely by chance a distant car shone its headlights on the trees that formed the horizon. Silhouetted against the illuminated trees I saw four joggers spread out across the bike lane before me. I missed them by only inches. Now I will ride only in the traffic lane on such roads. I’m not about to risk spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair because I have broken my neck against an unlighted pedestrian who won’t get out of the road as the law requires. Cars are safe companions because they are properly lighted and their drivers behave properly; pedestrians are deadly because they have neither lights nor reflectors and behave in unlawful ways.

Remember when riding in the dark to follow the same rules as in the daylight, but with special caution to avoid getting stopped inside an intersection, and with special watchfulness to try to observe whether drivers have seen you.

Wet roads are much harder to see at night than dry roads. When your headlamp beam strikes a dry road, it strikes many surfaces at different angles, so sufficient light is reflected back to your eyes. The water on a wet road smoothes and levels the irregularities, so the light is reflected further along the road instead of back toward your eyes. Lane and edge lines disappear, and it is often difficult to distinguish the road surface from the mud beside it. Besides looking for the road surface, look for other clues that indicate where it is and which way it goes, such as fences, power line poles, reflector buttons that mark the center of the road, and even the line of house fronts. Furthermore, don’t guide on the edge of the roadway. Keep the appropriate distance from the centerline or from the line of traffic. Don’t follow bike-lane stripes, because bike lanes swerve, narrow, and stop without warning. You may, as I have done when following a bike lane in the dark, find yourself in a muddy orchard with an invisible, but solid and dangerous, concrete berm between you and the roadway.

Riding on country roads in the dark is fun. The warm glow of your lamp travels with you, and cars can be heard and seen long before they reach you. Know your route, either by knowing the roads or by selecting a route from the map that is easy to remember and doesn’t turn off at corners that you will miss in the dark. Then go—don’t miss a trip just because it is dark.