Looking Out To Sea

The clocks have been changed for a month now and this has made a massive difference to my commute. Whereas before I would leave the house as light was beginning to creep into the world, and arrive home as the last light was dying, I now leave the house in partial daylight and return home in full darkness.

Amongst other things, this has turned my thoughts to bike safety when cycling in low light conditions. As Helen pointed out, the first thing to do is investigate the findings of the Evidence-Based Biking community. What is actually effective on the roads in darkness? The Cochrane Library, source of “independent high-quality evidence for health care decision making”, has a survey covering the topic of night-time visibility of pedestrians and cyclists. Sadly if you pin your hopes on the studies available you have to be content when they say “not enough evidence to make a conclusion”.

The one interesting aspect brought up by the review is summed up in this statement from the results summary:

Retroreflective materials enhance recognition, in particular when arranged in a ‘biomotion’ configuration, taking advantage of the motion from a pedestrian’s limbs.

I was very aware that while my bike was reasonably visible (lights, reflectors) my body was not. So actions like signalling were largely invisible, especially in rain where everything is glistening and car windscreens are harder to see through. So it’s odd that high-viz cycling jackets don’t emphasise either the arms or the general human body shape in their design.

I’ve got myself a new rear light just to be on the safe side. But on my searches I came across this extremely cool Tron-light-cycle system which is still in development, which looks like it has great potential to push us from bike lights being “torches strapped to bikes” to something which is designed around the bike itself. I wish the developers luck with their project. And maybe in a few years we’ll all own lights like this…