Originally Posted by tallard

Lights are fine, but, we have got to stop trying to MANDATORY everything on cycles. The point should be to not only encourage cycling, but to encourage low tech cycling. All forms of cycling can be done safely without all the extra "mandatory" gear, whether it be lights, bells, mirrors, helmets. For every extra "mandatory" item, there is a drop in number of cyclists and a phenomenon of "habitual non compliance" or "habitual criminality". This is a phenomenon observed with very young offenders. If they experience legal backlash for behavior at a young age, instead of acting as a deterrent, it the legal actions act as habituation, leaving the person in a constant state of assessment of self is criminal, reducing innapropriate benavior even more. An excess of unnecesrary laws onto cyclists has a similar effect in that the masses get used to not complying to any rules since there are too many, and so no safety gets achieved anyway.

At the very basic end of law making, laws are there to protect us from dangers, cycling is simply not dangerous, and to me NO laws that impede cycling in ANY way are desirable. Motorised vehicles are inherently dangerous, and they need as many laws as needed to impede their murderous ways.

The trick to have more people cycling is to have cycling be easier, safer (meaning less car induced deaths, instead of contentment with less percentage of skull scratches), cheaper (vs more gadgets to purchase), and more accessibility.

Rear lights are often an invisible joke! I suspect that 80% of rear lights sold are useless anyway.

I did use a red laser beam as self defense last year though, amazingly, the annoying little red beam stopped several uncoming motorists from cutting me off. I'd carry the key laser around my neck and as soon as I saw someone about to cut me off (night riding in SE Florida), I'd point the beam at their windshield and they stop immediately. Loved it!