Assuming you have a decent light and are commuting at night with no streetlight help, what's your maximum comfort speed: where you never hit a pothole, stone, branch or brown glass debris.

20

oh, I was hitting 21 last night and starting to feel uncomfortable. With street light, I can add a few mph, but feeling is 21 or 22 is my max comfortable speed at night with no moon. Just curious at what speeds others start backing off to avoid picking onself up off the ground.

I only voted 30 because you didn't give the option of voting higher. With my lights, my top speed is only limited by my strength, the slope, and the wind.

Uke,

I didn't give higher as I think any currently available bike light will allow rider to ride at 30+mph and
not hit:

- small dark potholes
- shards of broken brown beer bottles
- black rocks
- oil slicks

Kind of a useless poll. It all depends on your lights, or lack there of. I'd probably only ride at like 10-15 if I had no lights and was somewhere I could get night vision and not be routinely blinded by cars. With my lights though, I feel fine riding down the hill by my house at 40+ with intermittent streetlights.

Lots of flashlights will. Ditto with DIY and good bike-specific lights (Dinotte, Lupine, etc). With the right lights, riding at night is just as easy as riding in the day.

This is basically going to turn into a thread full of A.) people afraid to go faster than 20 mph, and B.) people with real light rigs who don't think twice about it.

Indeed. If I can't avoid (or just ride through) an obstacle at night with my headlight on, I probably wouldn't have been able to in broad daylight either...

I guess I shouldn't vote. I don't need a light to know where potholes are, and make little to no effort to dodge any of the others. I have about 800 lumens, but am not actively scanning the ground.

Much depends on how familiar you are with your route as well.

299,792,458 m / s

88 MILES PER HOUR!!!!

I routinely top 45 on my morning commute.

Novelty Hill is 2.25 miles long and has a couple sections of 10% grade. There are 3 street lights between the intersection at the top where I start heading down, and the intersection with Avondale Rd at the very bottom. I've done this hill hundreds of times and I can tell you where every pothole, manhole, drainage grate and mainentance flange is located on both the uphill and downhill sides.
I run a SON28 hub and a Supernova E3 light, (soon to be 2 E3 lights), and I only touch the brakes if it's wet and windy out because there's likely to be blow-down branches and slick leaves on the roadway. I like to keep my speed to the low 30s in that case.
The speed limit on Novelty Hill Rd. is 45mph, traffic typically moves at 50mph, and I've kept pace with the cars before.

I have a single speed. I will go as fast as my bike will.

I put 20, but other than on a few hills near where I live, that's about my general top speed day or night. If I'm riding on a road I'm not familiar with after dark, though, I cut my speed a few mph to allow for unseen hazards. In addition to road surface hazards, these may include blind driveways, loose dogs, or other surprises.

I put 30, but there's not really a practical upper limit. One of my old commutes involved a 70 km/h downhill that I would hit regardless of the light available or the quantity of booze in my system. With my currrent lights, no problem.

Ditto. $600 later, I cannot go fast enough to outrun my lighting setup. I put 30, but to be honest - have I ever gone that fast at night? I don't have any hills without lights on my night route, so I don't know.

Or C.) People that can't go faster than 20 mph anyway

Actually there's probably a lot different circumstances that would affect how fast one feels comfortable going at night (or day for that matter):

Busy well lit roads
vacant well lit roads
MUPs
badly lit roads in good condition
badly lit roads in bad condition
streets with lots of intersections
streets with lots of pedestrians, etc.


I ride slower at night. I'm not sure how much slower since it's too dark to read my cyclocomputer. I drive more cautiously at night when I'm in my car too.

It's not just the road hazards, it's the ninjas and the sneaky critters. I may miss the guy who's been sitting in his car for twenty minutes and is now about to door me.

I don't care how bright your lights are, it's not sunlight. You can't get the big picture like you can during the day.

It's not that I would rule out going 30 at night depending on where I was so I guess my MAX speed may not be affected but my average speed sure is.

I keep my speed down. I'm a morning person, but if I'm riding in the dark, odds are it is past my bedtime. Exhaustion is one of the main causes of accidents, so I go slower. And given the routes I ride most often at night, it really would be an accident. The most likely way for me to go down is me doing something stupid by mistake.

If I ever get around to doing dark rides in the morning, I'd keep my speed down a bit for the opposite reason. A lot of other road users are night owls, and they're sloppier in the morning. I don't trust them to keep me safe.

I'm afraid I can't reliably see small bits of brown glass even in the daytime, at any significant speed Other than that, in full darkness on dry pavement with no competing lights, and all my lights turned on including the DBS V2... probably 40mph or thereabouts. Let's call it 35mph to be safe I have over 2000 lumens available when I don't have lights out on loan, but routinely use only about 1200.

I think I'll need a light on my speedometer to answer this question.

I have 45 watts worth of nightsun. I'd say about 1 mph per watt, on dry, smooth roads that I am familiar with. Less if any of these factors change. Quite a bit less in some cases.

First of all, thank all of you that responded. I was afraid that too many would take this as a bragging right, rather than a safety concern.

Secondly, mechBgon, what light setup do you have that provides over 2000 lumens.

Thirdly, from your image, my view at night is about the same, but reach is further down the road.

Fourthly, the confirmable speed does vary according to conditions. A roadway downhill during light conditions wil be 28 to 30 mph. But at night, max that feels comfortable is 26. And yet, on a MUP, I was riding slow at 16 and that was too fast. Hit something that sounded like a metal fork pinging. No flat, too dark and isolated, I kept on riding.

I can adjust for MUPS and mixed lighting. My original concern was just a general question of what is considered a good safe and yet fast speed at night with good lights.

Again, thanks for the comments.

My front light isn't that great.

In poorly lit areas, where ninjas jump out of nowhere, it's about 16mph. Otherwise 20mph.

my schmidt e6 halogen lamp means dark=light when i'm there, so speed is not an issue.