Nuxx:9d08276e-0fb5-4fc6-8cf7-9b88c3ff86a9@o10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!o10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <9d08276e-0fb5-4fc6-8cf7-9b88c3ff86a9@o10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Lights Don't Make Cycling Any Safer Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:40:09 -0800 (PST) Lines: 19 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1296362410 27841 127.0.0.1 (30 Jan 2011 04:40:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 04:40:10 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: o10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Opera/9.80 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5.8; U; en) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.00,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 1834 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:843228

Lights don't make cycling any safer, even at night, because:

1. If a cyclist has lights then they "feel" safer and take more risks as a result.

2. If a cyclist has lights then other road users think they're safer and take more risks around them as a result.

3. Adding lights to a bicycle makes the bicycle larger, meaning that it's more likely to hit other objects, and heavier, meaning that it'll fall harder.

4. There is no evidence (that I'll accept) at the population level that shows that lights make cycling any safer.

Also making lights compulsory discourages take-up of cycling. You can either promote cycling or lights; the two are incompatible. Therefore it's obvious to me that we should immediately remove the law compelling cyclists to use lights at night.