Originally Posted by
cyccommute
...and they don't work if light doesn't fall on them. There are lots to situations where a reflector isn't going to have anything to "reflect". If you are coming to an intersection and the car is at 90 degrees to the bike, the reflector is going to be useless. Angled intersections are going to do the same. In fog or snow, the light can't travel very far and even straight in front of the car, the reflector can't reflect the light back. If the reflector is dirty, it won't reflect.
If the light is turned off or battery is flat it is less useful than reflector, even a dirty reflector. If a rider is too lazy or stupid to clean a reflector once a week or so then what hope have they got of remembering to put a light on their bike, keep a charged battery in it and then turn it on when it gets dark?!
If you are coming to an intersection and the car is at 90 degrees to the bike, the lights are going to be virtually useless as they aren't pointed that way. Unless you happen to have some sort of side lights, but I don't know any cyclists that have these, and what colour would thety need to be if you did?
I agree that lights are better than reflectors but a reflector is better than having nothing at all. A bike reflector weighs SFA and takes up about the same amount of room. Or, as others have already mentioned you can use reflective tape. I had some black reflective tape on a previous bike (not as much as in the pic a few posts back!) that was black so you couldn't really notice it during the day but it was reflective at night. Available on eBay or in shops in a range of colours to blend in with the paint on your bike. Or for those that want to go to the trouble of repainting the bike you can get additives such as phosphourus (sp?) to add to the paint to give it a reflective or luminous effect. A reflector is meant as supplementary vision (to be seen, obviously not to be seen with), not primary.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
On the other hand, laziness isn't an excuse. Every state law that I have looked at requires a front white light. Some require a reflector as well but all of them require active lighting for the front. Some, like my state, require a reflector for the rear but not an active light. Because of this, I carry a red reflector but I only do so because the law requires it. It's useless and I would rather have a light required but that's going to take legislation to change.
Correct, laziness isn't an excuse but it's how a lot of people are. A lot of recreational cyclists wouldn't know or care what the law says in relation to bikes and lights and/or reflectors. Shouldn't need a law to tell you that riding a bike in the dark without lights is a stupid and dangerous thing to do, but you see plenty of people still doing it!