To share or not to share?

[theclaud]

Done it frequently. Stop at a pub early afternoon, stay a bit longer than (ahem) planned. Someone hasn't brought lights, so you give 'em one of yours and agree to ride in the appropriate formation. It's the very stuff of which riding bikes together is made. Also what HLaB said - some people's lights are just way too bright for group riding. Switch 'em off.

 

[byegad]

Least they had lights, I almost hit a cyclist just before Christmas, no lights or reflectors, dressed in black on a black bike, on the wrong side of the road, and it was dark.

To say I ripped him a new one when I stopped was an understatement, he called me a typical motorist, so I pointed to the British Cycling sticker on my windscreen.

The guy scared the life out of me as I didn’t see him until the last second.

Yes I used to drop a friend home after a night in the wargames club. I then had to use a narrow country lane with a steep drop downhill section and no pavment.
One dark, wet night, on the hill, I dipped my lights for an on coming car as he crested a lump in the road. As I returned to main beam, I saw a shadow in the left margin of the road a couple of feet in front of my bonnet.
To this day I don't know how I missed him! It was a jogger, entirely in black, and the luckiest man alive! A little way down the bank, where it as safe, I stopped and when he reached me I told him what had happened and politely suggested he ran facing the traffic and wear something reflective.
His two word reply, informed me he was a moron.
That winter I saw him few times and as I passed him, still I black still on the left I'd wind down the passenger window and monosyllabically greet him.
Move on a year and one wet night there was a police car blocking the junction.😠 You can guess why. Some poor sod had killed a jogger on the hill.

 

[winjim]

A failed rear light is not a problem, that's what reflectors are for.

 

[RichardB]

I remember student caving trips where 6 of us would emerge from the cave with two working lights between us. My light worked as it was my own which I looked after, but the communal club lights were a lucky dip. When I took over as "lights" man over six months I nursed many of the lights back into use, dumped the zombie lights and we went from maybe 2 dozen dodgy lights to 15 that actually worked. Over the next year they all went downhill again after I got increasingly bored with the job particularly after being presented with a crate of mud encrusted lights to recharge from a trip I hadn't even been on. Hey, I have my own reliable lights, I'd doing this for you lot so got fed up with being taken advantage of

We're spoilt these days, both for caving and cycling in that lights simply work. The old caving lights (miners lamps) had belt mounted recharcheable batteries which weight 6lbs - our current lights' batteries fit on the back of our helmets and weigh maybe 50g and the light lasts for days on low power mode.

Ah, the days of miners' lamps, where the internal state of the battery was an unknown and a freshly-recharged light could last you for 12 hours or 30 minutes with no way of telling. Do you feel lucky, punk? It says a lot about the lights that we used to always take a couple of acetylene lamps and some carbide (plus water if it was a dry cave) 'just in case'. I haven't been caving since the advent of LED lighting, but I imagine it has transformed the experience, and made things much safer. You could sling a couple of reliable, long-lasting lights in an ammo box* the way that I always have a couple of cheapo Aldi lights in my cycle bag somewhere, 'just in case'.

*Still using these, or does that date me even more?

 

[Profpointy]

Ah, the days of miners' lamps, where the internal state of the battery was an unknown and a freshly-recharged light could last you for 12 hours or 30 minutes with no way of telling. Do you feel lucky, punk? It says a lot about the lights that we used to always take a couple of acetylene lamps and some carbide (plus water if it was a dry cave) 'just in case'. I haven't been caving since the advent of LED lighting, but I imagine it has transformed the experience, and made things much safer. You could sling a couple of reliable, long-lasting lights in an ammo box* the way that I always have a couple of cheapo Aldi lights in my cycle bag somewhere, 'just in case'.

*Still using these, or does that date me even more?

And using the plugs in the end of biros to block the holes in the Oldham t-cells if you anticipated swimming, and forgetting to take them out when recharging and bursting the battery. Thankfully my student digs evidently had polyester carpet so I got away with spilling acid all over it. Not carried an ammo box for years, and then only for a camera occasionally, but to be honest I was never a great believer in carrying a load of extra crap if I could avoid it. My own lamps always worked, so I didn't go in for spares back then, nor first aid kits and other encumbrances - maybe a survival bag in my helmet but that was my lot.

 

[RichardB]

And using the plugs in the end of biros to block the holes in the Oldham t-cells if you anticipated swimming, and forgetting to take them out when recharging and bursting the battery. Thankfully my student digs evidently had polyester carpet so I got away with spilling acid all over it. Not carried an ammo box for years, and then only for a camera occasionally, but to be honest I was never a great believer in carrying a load of extra crap if I could avoid it. My own lamps always worked, so I didn't go in for spares back then, nor first aid kits and other encumbrances - maybe a survival bag in my helmet but that was my lot.

Ammo boxes are for Mars bars - and perhaps the odd bit of survival kit. But mainly Mars bars.