Originally Posted by
Mr. Underbridge
To me, it's the wrong question. The right question, to me, is "what is the minimum width tire that makes you confident you can roll over anything in your path that you could possibly not see"? Because you're just not going to see *everything* riding at night unless you have a lighting system that costs about $1000 or go stupendously slow.
To me, the answer is about 1.5" (37mm) tires on a paved road at 20mph with a reasonable light (200L Dinotte). To knock that down to 23mm tires, we're talking about a much brighter light and much lower speed.
So in winter, counterintuitively, I go much faster on wider tires than thinner. I roll over all kind of bumps, potholes, tree debris, rocks, etc that I may not see on the nice wide things.
Nah. You're still looking at this (no pun intended) from the perspective of poor lighting. You can spend $40 on a P7 and get 500 lumens of lighting. Buy 4, and you're putting out 2000 lumens for less than it costs to buy a Dinotte 200. You don't need $1000 lighting to break 500, 1000, or even 2000 lumens. Just takes some unorthodox approaches (LED flashlights or DIY) to get there.
That said, I agree with you that wider tires make bumps easier, but that's no different during the day or during the night. I'd enjoy riding fat tires over the bumps on the MUP or sidewalk cracks or crummy roads here, but skinny tires help me maintain higher speeds, so it's a tradeoff.