this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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To be fair, cars have headlight and taillights.
Here in Sweden cars are required to allways have their headlights on when the car is moving, making them far easier to see even during the day.
It us frankly one of the most annoying things about crossing the street when being abroad, cars having their headlights off during the day, it is much more difficult to see if a car is moving if it has the headlights turned off, than if they are on.
Bikes have lights too though?
That is not a requirement, you to have to have front and rear reflectors, I don't remember if side reflectors are required or not.
One thing that a lot of bikes has that is illegal here but ignored by the police, is a flashing front light.
Rear lights can absolutely be flashing, but front lights can't.
Depends on the country you live in 😂 here they are absolutely required and also are not allowed to be blinking.
They are actually required at night. https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/Trafikregler/Cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/Trafikregler/Regler-for-cykel/
Reflectors are also required.
And yeah the rear light are allowed to flash.
I still agree that cars are way more visible.
It is, actually: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/vagtrafik/trafikregler/cyklist-mopedist-motorcyklist/trafikregler/regler-for-cykel/
You're liable to pay 500 SEK if you bike without lights when it's dark outside.
Ah, nice, I didn't know that!
The front lights are allowed to flash in Denmark and it's super annoying, and dangerous in my opinion. The lowest allowed blinking frequency is also way lower than rear lights in Sweden, so it's like being flashed by a camera repeatedly.
I still don't understand why lights even have a flashing option
I assume it's to catch people's attention better
I find them annoying but I also used to find DRLs annoying and now I'm in favor of them as good safety, and I've not looked into the safety of flashing lights so I avoid taking a side on that one for now
As others have said, this depends on the jurisdiction.
In the UK, you have to have lights on at night: white at the front, red at the back. They can either be steady or blinking.
I think you're also supposed to have orange reflectors on pedals which is consistent with orange flashers for slow traffic.
but I find it hard to buy decent pedals that actually met this requirement.
Yes, particularly difficult with clipless pedals, such that strictly speaking I think it's illegal to ride at night with them!
In Belgium at least they are required (reflectors aren't on all styles of bikes), problem is that cyclists often have battery powered lights which are not very bright to the point you could say they are not even working. And in my experience it really renders cyclists invisible at night until you almost run into them.
In that sense high-viz vests definitely help because they usually make them stand out more than even normal lights.
Ofcourse this is mostly needed in the places with no separate infrastructure and no street lights. (Edit: which is what the situation is in near where I live, the shortest route to bike is through farmlands with no infrastructure for bikes and no streetlight ms for sections of it. I'd personally love better and separate infrastructure since it's basically part of the reason why avoid biking there during the lang dark winter)
In California (Well, at least in LA County) it's required by law for cyclists riding at night to have a bell, headlight, and reflectors. Different parts of the world are different though.
Source: Got a ticket once for no headlight.
Their visibility is quite different tho
So is their mortality rate when they hit a pedestrian, and their speed.
And what would be the point of your comment? The lights on a bike are for protecting the bike from cars, not pedestrians from bikes.
Wait what? There are countries where you can drive without headlights?
Places I've lived in the US people keep them off as the default. Here in Seattle people don't even turn them on at night half the time, I guess they think the street lighting is good enough. I try and signal people to turn on their lights if I'm biking at night and so far none that I know of have actually turned them on
ho, you are still using street ligths?
It’s been years that we cut them on a lot of major axis and after midnight in my town for all the classic roads.
It’s mainly to reduce the electricity bill, have less night pollution (more stars in the sky!) and reduce the speed of the cars when the road is empty (quite effective!).
Side note: since now few years, our cars are sold with front lights always active for visibility purpose (these small lights are cut only when we switching to the big ones)
At my previous apartment the lights outside were so bright it was unreal. Sixth floor, curtains, I could still read books at night without turning on an inside light. Can't remember the last time I saw more than a dozen stars in the sky even at my new place. Light pollution is a very present thing here
It’s currently raining and foggy in SLC and probably 1/3 of the cars I passed on the road today had no lights at all. Almost hitting a grey car running dark in the fog does not put one in the holiday spirit.
Yes, here in Austria you are allowed to drive without headlights in bright conditions, only are required to turn them on when there is impaired visibility (night, rain, snow, fog, etc.).
E g. Germany
Only for motorcycles it is mandatory all day
Here in the U.S., (and I'm assuming it's the same elsewhere, but just explaining for simplicity), cars used to have a simple headlight switch, which also lit up the instrument cluster on the dashboard. It was an easy heuristic: If you can't see the gauges because it's dark, turn on the headlights.
Now, every car has a marketing-gimmick dashboard lit up all the time with all sorts of multi-color lights. In the cars I've been in, the headlight indicator just a small, green light in the corner. Drivers accustomed to the old way think that their headlights are on because the dashboard is lit up. The Toyota Prius was notorious for this when it was new; I used to joke that they didn't come with headlights as a way to save fuel.
It's not as bad now, but people just forget o sometimes. It's worse when cars have day-time running lights, because then the drivers see light coming from the front of the car and think all the marker lights are on.
One of my cars had running lights and always lit digital instrument cluster, but it still managed to hit that same heuristic, only in reverse: to be visible in the daylight, the instrument cluster had to get way brighter, so if the cluster feels absurdly bright, turn on the full headlights.
Nowadays, I think they include a light sensor to keep the cluster at a comfy level regardless of how bright it is, which I think should only be done for ones with automatic lights and only when they're set to automatic mode, but sadly nobody ever asks my opinion about these things
Modern cars also tend to have daytime running lights that are switched on automatically when the ignition is turned on, and are meant purely for visibility.
With modern cars, you mean cars since some time early 2000s? Actual modern cars (5 yo cars), are the only ones I see not have headlights turned on during day time.
Apparently, it's not required under EU law to have the headlights turned on during daytime, and manufactures will rather have a couple of cm longer milage...
Running lights, not headlights. Different things both practically and legally.
Yesterday I was paying attention specifically to the front lights of cars. Almost all cars that had license plates registered in the last ten years also had independent running lights. Mostly in the form of a white LED strip around or under the headlight cover, an element built into the headlight (e.g. a ring around the main lens in BMWs), or annoyingly, a separate amber-colored light that I often mistake for a turning signal.
Legally, running lights might not even exist at all where I live. Traffic laws (and common sense) require proper headlights to be used in any kind of reduced visibility condition.
Ah, language barrier thing. Apologies
This is almost as bad as the American cars that use one of the brake lights as a turn signal
And in the States cars are required to have side markers, as well.
Corner markers?
I remember that Volvo had those for a few years here, but that was in the very early 2000's I haven't seen the on normal cars for a long time.
Seems like a good idea though.
Side* markers. lol
They can be on the corners or not, i believe.
Right. You're not going to see the car color at night.
Whatever law required headlights on totally backfired. Rear lights are off and people don't realize or don't care, and now they won't switch on the actual lights manually because there's an automation.
IIRC there was only a short window when turning the rear lights off was a thing, and the law has since gone back to having to turn them on when the car is turned on. While there are still people in cars like that, they're a minority.