Blinded by the cycle lights

Modify your cycle lights a bit

So you are flashing merrily like some sort of secret signalling system and the oncoming traffic can easily see you. Its much better than a steady light, which can disappear in front of the lights of the cars behind you and make you invisible to the traffic that you want to see you.

Now, if you've got quite a posh cycle light, the chances are it will have a shroud over the top of the front light, so you probably don't need to worry.

But if you've got a flashing front light with no shroud, cycling down a dark lane can be quite scary, however, bright your light is.

The problem is that your eyes can't adjust to the sudden change between light and dark and you are partly dazzled by the backlight. In fact, recently we've been out in some country lanes a bit late coming back and ended up turning the front light off and navigating by the moon, getting ready to switch it on quick when we saw a car approaching in the distance.

An easy solution

Of course its easy to fix really. You just bend a bit of card or plastic over the top of the light and tie-wrap it on.

The flashing is still a bit of a problem though - your eyes still find adjustment a bit tricky although its still needed for safety.

Perhaps the full solution is to have the flashing on top of your head to be seen and a steady fixed light on your handlebars for you to see.

Then all you've got to worry about is being reported as a UFO.