Originally Posted by
acidfast7
I still think that the "flats" worry is overrated.
I've gone 5000km with no hassles. ILTB has made it roughly 50000km without a flat.
A wider tire and a proper street maintenance program seem to work wonders.
I think a lot of people getting flats are because they're using thin, easy-rolling tires rather than commuting/trekking tires.
Keep right on thinking that. It will give you cold solace
when you get a flat. The only reason that Benjamin Franklin didn't include flats in his quote about inevitability was because tires hadn't been invented yet.
There are two ways to avoid flats: Don't use pneumatic tires or don't ride. Neither option is a good one. But if you ride a bike and you use pneumatic tires, you
will flat a tire. And the width of the tire has no bearing on that fact. I ride tires from 23mm to 50mm. The 50mm tires are knobbed mountain bike tires that stand above the pavement by a good centimeter and I have gotten flats in them. It's just going to happen eventually. It doesn't necessarily happen often but just because you've gone for a while without a flat doesn't mean that one can't happen the next time you put wheel to pavement.
Nor is 5000km really that far.
Flats are only one of the problems that you can have happen at night on a bike. There are an infinite variety of other things that can happen for which you might need a light off the bike. The range from the mundane like a derailer adjustment to the bizarre like
sucking a squirrel into your disc brake.