Essential gear for night riding?
Essential gear for night riding?
I know about the obvious stuff like a bright vest, blinking rear light and wearing light colored clothes but is there anything else that I need for when nightfall hits?
A silver spear to protect from werewolves and other supernatural predators.
Make sure you have enough battery capacity to power your lights until your destination or use a dynamo and have a headtorch with you for backup. Your lights failing in the middle of nowhere on a cloudy night is no fun!
Go big on reflective clothing. Rather than having small reflective patches on your clothes or bike, you can get jackets where the whole garment is made of reflective fabric. When a car's headlights hit you that jacket will light up like the sun.
Ortlieb's high-vis panniers are similar.
My suggestions, in no particular order:
- Front and rear lights, obviously. You can get lights that offer side visibility and get a front light with a cut off lens so you aren't blinding oncoming peoole.
- You can get vests or jackets that are basically one big reflector. The brand proviz makes a ton of options, but you can find them cheaper. I had one from a brand off Amazon and had peoole come up to me to ask about it because it was so visible.
- Ankle reflective bands are one of the best types of reflectors you can get.
- Tires with reflective sidewalls are awesome.
- If riding during dusk or dawn, wear high viz with reflective elements. High viz colours alone aren't very visible in the dark or by vehicle headlights at night.
- Ride in well lit areas, if possible.
- Ride slower than you would during the day.
Get retroreflectors. White pointing forward, red pointing back. You won't always realize when a light craps out, it's best to have passive backups. Get amber-colored retroreflectors that you can put between the spokes so you have sideways visibility. You can also buy reflective tape and wrap it around the frame.
There’s retro reflective tape etc for the spokes, too.
There are also retro reflective rims and tyres
Sadly, going 'full tuk-tuk' is the goal here...
I recommend clear safety glasses. Especially if you live someplace dry. You don't want dust or insects in your eyes. I hit a palo verde beetle once and it almost knocked my glasses off my face.
Not clear, but photochromic cycling glasses have been a god send for me.
I can wear them all the time, including inside a store, at night, during bright summer days, or during those rides that start before dawn/dusk.
Before that, i had dedicated clear and dark glasses, but they were highly inconvenient.
You can also try yellow safety glasses at night - blocks super intensive blue laser active-matrix LEDs™
Eye protection is super important for daily bicycle use, no matter weather or time of day. A single speck of dust falling into the eye at the wrong time can cause a serious accident.
The more you ride, the higher probability of such thing happening. Not to mention wind drying your eyes, it can be serious pretty fast.
A lot of crashes are side impacts. So reflective frame tape or lights in spokes can help with side visibility. Some lights throw a little light to the side for this purpose as well.
blinking rear light
Blinking lights are my pet-peeve with cyclists. Cars don't have blinking lights - neither should bikes.
We aren't riding large vehicles, so we have to put more effort into being more visible.
A combination of a blinking rear light and reflective gear gives us better odds.
Any blinking lights except indicator lights are often illegal in traffic.
Yeah, blinking lights make it more difficult to assess position and speed relative to cyclist, especially at night without street lights. At least get another one that shines all the time, or one that fades in and out but always shines at least a little, or a really good and big reflective one.