Originally Posted by
Jenniferg82
Please skip to MY POINT IS if you don’t want to read my story.. lol
Hi everyone
Besides my intro, I am a newbie to these forums. It feels great to read all the posts from fellow bikers as none of my friends are into biking at all. Anyhow to make a long story short I was “doored” a week ago here in Philly. I was in the bike lane on Christopher Colombia blvd. (very busy city traffic area), and I was about to stop at a red light and all of a sudden a passenger in an UBER car flew open the door and whack, I go flying. I swear I saw it coming inches away but I couldn’t stop myself. I had just enough time to form a quick sentence in my head. That sentence being, Jenn you are in trouble. I guess I was lucky because all I have to deal with is some pretty bad road rash, bruises and a broken iPhone. But wow..... what a fall.
I ride a specialized expedition sport and I guess it took the hit pretty well. I see so many people riding thinner bikes in the city and I don’t think I would have the courage...if this happened on a smaller bike I imagine the bike would be totaled and I would have been seriously hurt.
MY POINT IS I want to increase my road visibility. I have these crappy Walmart lights on my bike and they are constantly falling off, so much so I just wind up leaving them at home.. it’s funny, when I see bikers with these lights I laugh to myself and roll my eyes. But after what happened to me I see the importance of being as visible as I can. Though I don’t want to be annoying and deal with the dirty looks.. because riding in the city is funny that way. I ride a specialized expedition sport. Any advice is appreciated. I would like to keep it at 40 or under ( preferably under!) Summer is officially here, so I plan on doing more night riding. I did look up some lights on amazon and eBay, but honestly I don’t understand what number brightness I would even need? I want to be highly visible without being annoying. Also, I want to see far ahead when I am riding and with the Walmart lights, that is pretty impossible.. Thanks so much for your help! Jenn
First off, if I'm understanding your description of your accident correctly, I'm not sure lights would have mattered. You at least have to have eyeballs going in your direction. Sounds like the uber person made no effort to even look.
All that said, I do a lot of night riding and I ride with visibility lights during the day. I find that it makes a big difference in the respect I get from cars and the room they give me. During the day, I get by with a Bontrager 800 lumen light in a flashing mode in the front. For the back, the Bontrager light that goes at about 60 lumens works really well. HOWEVER - with these lights, a big part of the reason they work so well during the day is that they have lenses that concentrate the beams and they have flashing patterns that are hard to ignore. These lights punch above their weight for daytime riding. During the day, you need to have a bright light that has a sharp edged flash in order to get the maximum respect from cars (read: reaction to your visibility).
For night riding, and I ride in a rural area that is hilly, heavily wooded and has many curves in the road. For this, I find that I need a minimum of about 1500 lumens to be able to make full speed descents of hills that get me up to about 30mph. Incidentally, that is about the same brightness as a single car headlight. The lights I use also allow me to go up to about 2500 lumens which I use in the same manner one would use a bright light dimmer in an automobile. The same taillights work fine.
I think the same applies in urban environments. My kids, both went to a major urban university, and watching a lot of the typical (and worthless) blinkie style lights get lost in the urban jumble of lighting and car lights was really kind of frightening. So I would recommend go big on brightness and flashing on both front and tail for max visibility.
J.