Lights for riding at night - legalities

[PedallingNowhereSlowly]

I did some experimenting with lighting over the winter months.
My go to for night riding is two red LEDs at the rear, one constant and one flashing. Anyway, experimentally I went to town, largely on account of being curious about what would happen. This is what I tried:

• Rackmount rear light, steady
• Seatpost mount rear light, flashing
• 2x panniers with a large red flashing light attached to the rear side of both
• Hi-viz tabard thing with 3x flashing red LEDs at the back

I thought I'd be marking myself out as a target and inviting abuse. The opposite happened. Drivers were really patient. They took their time overtaking and they gave plenty of space. And nearly all of them signalled to pull back in. This was in the run up to Christmas too, when drivers are notoriously impatient.

I did this several times and I found the results to be almost unbelievable. I was going out one or two evenings a week at this point so I must have tested out the ensemble half a dozen times.

The occasional driver still did a psychopass (punishment pass) but I experienced that literally twice. I can say with certainty it was no more frequent, than with the two light setup and I suspect possibly less frequent. I caveat this though with the fact I wasn't doing huge distances so the data will suffer from severe sample bias.

I will be repeating the experiment when the nights draw in later this year, hopefully cycling more frequently and covering more miles.

 

[Dogtrousers]

White lights front, red rear.

Why would you have anything different?

If you were a French person from before the 1990s you might want yellow/amber on the front.

 

[johnnyb47]

I remember when Led lights first came on the market and the only choice for a front light was green.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I remember when Led lights first came on the market and the only choice for a front light was green.

Yeah limitations of the tech at the time. Bloody useless in country lanes as well. I went back to halogen till the led tech improved sufficiently.

 

[DaveReading]

I'm constantly surprised when I see cyclists not using the accepted norm for lights.

Cyclist ignoring the rules about what lights they must legally display at night?

Surely not.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Cyclist ignoring the rules about what lights they must legally display at night?

Surely not.

Not many have lights with BS6102/3 equivalent markings.

 

[PedallingNowhereSlowly]

Not many have lights with BS6102/3 equivalent markings.

You do have to look reasonably hard for them. StVZO lights are easier to come by. Or at least lights that are advertised as having StVZO approval sometimes also have BS6102/3.

Lezyne do sell a number of StVZO approved lights now, which means that legal lighting isn't quite as almost unobtanium as it was.
There is also the Cateye Reflex Rack, and a number of other Cateye rear lights - but they don't seem to be as widely stocked as the non-StVZO lights.

When did you see a bike trailer with the triangular reflectors bearing the “III” or “IIIA” approval mark, as per schedule 18 of The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations?

 

[mjr]

You do have to look reasonably hard for them. StVZO lights are easier to come by. Or at least lights that are advertised as having StVZO approval sometimes also have BS6102/3.

And more usefully, StVZO has been allowed by the regs for at least 20 years anyway, so everyone can ignore the expensive and outdated BS.