See Any Bikes?
Last night I had some time to kill which I spent walking around Kenmore square watching cyclists. This is what it looked like:
Okay, can you tell how many cyclists are in this scene?
No cyclists you say? Look again! There are seven.
See?
Of course you can’t. BECAUSE THESE FOLKS NEED TO GET SOME FRIKKIN’ LIGHTS!
And I’m not talking about those tiny anemic blinky lights that look like they came out of a grocery store toy vending machine.
Real hardy lights. Ones that I can see with my eyes.
And while you’re at it, get a bunch of them. You can never have too many lights.
Okay, maybe you can.
But you’ve all got a ways to go.
I’ve started wearing a reflective safety vest at night because I have to take some unlit 45-mph roads to get between work and home. Even if my lights should fail or not be bright enough to compete with headlights, the vest still lights up like a Christmas tree when headlights hit it. It’s also bright yellow, so it’s highly visible on gray days that are just a little too light for bike lights as well.
Reflection only helps if they have their headlights on. I would like to say that nighttime drivers without headlights are a rare anomaly… but I live in Boston.
So once I was touring, alone, and I was on this not busy highway into Prince Rupert, BC. Getting dark. Seemed like a good idea to keep going because of the schedule of the ferry I wanted to catch. It got completely dark, no moon, and I I could not even see the road. I just pointed my bike toward the low spot in the treeline ahead. When a car or truck came along, I could see the surface of the road by their headlights, and I pulled to the side.
Once in town, after two hours or so of that foolish kind of riding, a helpful local pedestrian said “you need a light there.” Uh, yeah.