BRIGHT IDEAS

There’s more to cyclist visibility than daytime lights and reflectives, argues Rob Ainsley...

Dark winter evenings? No problem. With today’s lighthouse-strength illumination, we can carry on our summer mileages. Loophole lawyers will soon replace the standard excuse of careless drivers – ‘blinded by the sun’ – with ‘blinded by the bike light’. I recently saw a sign at Dorking station asking cyclists to turn off lights when on the platform, because train drivers mistake them for signals.

The risk for oncoming traffic of temporary blindness, or quick-onset strobing-induced epilepsy, is not confined to evenings. Increasingly I’m seeing cyclists, as well as motorists, lit up in bright sunshine. In the homes of cyclists now you can hardly find a spare plug socket thanks to all the LEDs on charge.

Advocates of daytime lights – mostly, people trying to flog you ones for a hundred quid – point to a 2005 Danish study claiming a 19 per cent drop in accidents with permanently illuminated bikes. I’m wary as it was one single, self-reported study, not replicated since. Self-reporting invites delusion. For instance, 77 per cent of drivers in Sweden, and 88 per cent in the US, rate their own ability as in the top 50 per cent. And online studies are usually not worth the paper they’re written on.

Another justification of the alwayson brigade is that ‘it might save your life’. But that’s victimblaming. Anything might save your life. Wearing a hazmat suit when cycling through Salisbury might save your life. But almost certainly not. At least, though, people couldn’t see you’re not wearing a helmet.

It’s all down to risk, and after 50 years of cycling almost every day I’m pretty good at judging things for myself. Certainly in the top 50 per cent, anyway. My riding style is what makes me feel safer, not particularly what I’m wearing. Though as a typical cyclist, I’m wearing pretty well.

Demanding reflective gear is a modern Health And Safety trope, sometimes without logic. I’ve seen squaddies wearing both camouflage and hi-vis. Sure, I often wear brights at dusk or at night, especially on dark country roads, but not for short utility trips in well-lit centres, and not during the day. My bike is my normal way of getting around and I do it in normal clothes, just as I don’t take my walking boots, bivvy bag, compass and distress flares when I’m nipping out to the post office, although given the rate post offices are closing, our nearest one will soon be a weekend hike away.

Bikes are remarkable machines. They’re not only the most efficient transport system in nature, even better on miles per breakfast than the gliding albatross, they can also bestow invisibility as effectively as any Harry Potter magic cloak. We’ve all been cut up by the driver who claims not to have seen us, even though we’re in reflectives and spotlit like a prog-rock concert.

On those occasions when a car comes the other way down a narrow street, there isn’t room for both of you, so you stop off to the side, make eye contact, and wave them through cheerily. They drive through without acknowledgement. You’re invisible, until you go through a red light or mount the pavement, as the bitter aphorism goes. Then you’ll be noticed, and complained about by every online commentator in the local newspaper, even if the article was only about pigeons.

There’s a wider issue of the visibility of cyclists. Precisely because we take up less road space, make less noise, don’t form jams, hog less parking and so on, we’re not noticed. Many rush hour junctions in and outside London put through more commuters on bikes than any other form of transport, but lobby for better infrastructure there, and you’ll be dismissed as a minority. No point spending money; nobody cycles here.

So, some activists (in Latvia, for instance – which, coincidentally, demands daytime lights on cars) have taken to surrounding their bikes with a car-sized metal frame, and lumbering thus around the town to make a point about road space.

Maybe campaigners over here could take a less provocative line in establishing our rightful presence on the street. How about riding round with hi-vis and lights even in daytime, for instance? I’ll drink to that, except I can’t plug the kettle in, my front light’s charging.

My riding style is what makes me feel safer, not particularly what I’m wearing