Police Campaign on Lights on Bicycles

[ufkacbln]

Is there any point in lights?

I have a 50 watt equivalent HID with a flashing 15 watt equivalent LED and I still get traffic that can't see me!

 

[Cab]

I don't understand the negative posts here on this.

It's helping people to help themselves. Sorry but your an idiot riding a bicycle at night with no lights. Why shouldn't the police enforce this?

In my book it's welcome.

Cycling home I saw at least eight cars jumping red lights, at least three that had faulty headlights, and countless motorists who hadn't the faintest idea how to use their indicators. Thats not counting the ones overtaking cyclists too closely, parking in cycle lanes, and speeding. While I entirely agree that enforcing rules on the road is a good idea, and that it would be foolish to exclude cyclists from such enforcement, I can't help but feel that the buttock wrenchingly p1$$ poor quality of motoring on the roads of Cambridge is of more pressing concern than the fact that a fair whack of cyclists here don't have lights on their bikes. Just purely in terms of the risk they represent to others, the noise, and the damage that they do, I rekon that the police here could do, I would think that plod could do better by also blitzing bad motorists. Yet year after year we have the bike lights thing, and nothing is done to deal with bad motorists here.

 

[andygates]

FFS, it's an easy thing to get an improvement in. Little investment for good results. It's called resource prioritisation, you bunch of precious picked-upon ninnies.

 

[Chuffy]

It's a publicity campaign. Raise awareness of the fact that it's a good idea to have working lights. Cheap, because it's basically a few posters, a press release and bobbies pulling a few more people than they would otherwise for a stern word. Like Andy says, good return for a small outlay but the general consensus is that plod is devoting his entire resource into oppressing poor hard done by us.

 

[Chuffy]

Actually, don't poor hard pressed motorists (tm) whine in the same fashion?

 

[BentMikey]

Too true!

 

[spindrift]

In what proportion of these incidents was the lack of lighting a contributory factor? Not that I'm against enforcing the law, but the question jumped out at me straight away

Most cyclists are hit in daylight by idiot drivers, lighting has very little to do with it.

 

[Morrisette]

Cycling home I saw at least eight cars jumping red lights, at least three that had faulty headlights, and countless motorists who hadn't the faintest idea how to use their indicators. Thats not counting the ones overtaking cyclists too closely, parking in cycle lanes, and speeding. While I entirely agree that enforcing rules on the road is a good idea, and that it would be foolish to exclude cyclists from such enforcement, I can't help but feel that the buttock wrenchingly p1$$ poor quality of motoring on the roads of Cambridge is of more pressing concern than the fact that a fair whack of cyclists here don't have lights on their bikes. Just purely in terms of the risk they represent to others, the noise, and the damage that they do, I rekon that the police here could do, I would think that plod could do better by also blitzing bad motorists. Yet year after year we have the bike lights thing, and nothing is done to deal with bad motorists here.

Here here!!!!! Totally agree.

Not to mention the RIDICULOUS levels of bike theft in Cambridge. Report a bike stolen, and the police barely even write it down, let along investigate the theft. A friend's son had a bike stolen from Regent's Street underneath the CCTV cameras and yet was told that the police 'didn't have the resources' to watch the CCTV footage of the theft!!!

If there's resources to 'blitz' unlit cyclists, there's resources to 'blitz' cars jumping red lights on the A14 slip roads, cars cutting up bikes/peds at crossings, cars failing to indicate before turning left across cyclists, morons driving whilst on the phone....and yet I've seen all of these things happening IN SIGHT OF A POLICE OFFICER. Drivers know they won't get stopped - they don't even bother to hide the phone under the dashboard!

<...and....breathe......>

 

[spindrift]

Well said Morrissette

 

[frog]

Just as there are lots of new drivers on the road who haven't driven in the dark there are also lots, hopefully, of new cyclists who haven't ridden in the dark as well. Cars come equipped with lights, bikes don't.

At least while the coppers are out and about looking at cyclists they aren't sitting in the station swigging tea.

 

[Cycling Naturalist]

In what proportion of these incidents was the lack of lighting a contributory factor? Not that I'm against enforcing the law, but the question jumped out at me straight away

Most cyclists are hit in daylight by idiot drivers, lighting has very little to do with it.

A lot of the night ones are side impact when the lights are not so apparent.

 

[John the Monkey]

FWIW, I saw two lads (dark clothing, dark coloured bikes, no lights). Although they were visible in streetlight, there's quite lengthy patches of my commute where I genuinely couldn't tell where they were (they seemed to be on and off the pavement a lot too). I'm not sure how the cars coped, but I had trouble seeing them until almost on top of them (and I knew they were there, because I'd seen them in the streetlight earlier).

None of which, of course, absolves me as a cyclist, or motorists of their responsibility to look out for such things, but still...

 

[spindrift]

Call me a chavtastic pikemungous bumclown Patrick, but fear of side impacts prompted me to buy these beauties:

http://www.rainbowracer.co.uk/

 

[gambatte]

FWIW, I saw two lads (dark clothing, dark coloured bikes, no lights). Although they were visible in streetlight, there's quite lengthy patches of my commute where I genuinely couldn't tell where they were (they seemed to be on and off the pavement a lot too). I'm not sure how the cars coped, but I had trouble seeing them until almost on top of them (and I knew they were there, because I'd seen them in the streetlight earlier).

None of which, of course, absolves me as a cyclist, or motorists of their responsibility to look out for such things, but still...

People will say "but you saw them"

Ignoring the the fact that it was, eventually, late, fleetingly

Bikes sometimes do come equipped with lights. All from decathlon do. But I reckon you'd have to be a complete prat not to know you're supposed to have them to ride in the dark

 

[Cab]

FFS, it's an easy thing to get an improvement in. Little investment for good results. It's called resource prioritisation, you bunch of precious picked-upon ninnies.

Cambridge has a massive transient cyclist population. Blitz 'em every year, next year you've still got loads of cyclists without lights. It gives you no improvement proportional to the investment in police time. You can have a nice graph with 'number of notices issued', but I guarantee that a year later the same proportion of cyclists will have no lights. Thats why we get plod on our streets doing this every single year with no improvement evident.