To think that lots of cyclists in London don't realise how invisible they are?

[CruCru]

I wonder whether lots of them don't drive and so don't realise how difficult they are to see at night? Driving along the Euston Road, I keep seeing cyclists wearing black coats, dark trousers, no helmet, tiny light.

Clearly as a driver it's my responsibility to see other road users (cyclists, pedestrians, horses, other cars) but I really wish cyclists would at least wear a yellow strip at night.

My eyesight condition is rare in younger people, but is not uncommon in older people. It sometimes scares me to think how many people are out there, driving, on the road with eyesight - especially in low light - which is poor.

My mum says she is finding it hard to driver at night now because her 'night vision' seems to be going whilst her daytime eye sight isn't deterioration.

Pedestrians in dark clothing? what!

I am heading into London shortly, planning on wearing a black and white dress with black jacket, is that going to cause an issue TinyMonkey?

Yeah it might if you do something stupid and step out in front of a car... It is harder to see pedestrians all in black!

Someone above made a point about flashing lights. The human eye finds it very difficult to track flashing lights, but your attention is drawn to flashes. So it's best to have two lights, one flashing and one steady. Or one good one doing a slow pulse from dim to bright to dim to bright be never off.

DH and I refer to those dressed in all black as Ninja's. I have a black coat but in winter when I wear it I wear a white hat and scarf if there isn't snow on the ground. So simple yet extremely effective.

YANBU. In Cambridge when I used to both drive and cycle there, I can remember multiple occasions of hearing drivers roll their windows down and shout "Get some LIGHTS!!!" to idiots without them. Surprises me that anybody dares cycle without flashing neon billboards advertising their presence.

Meant to say it surprises me that anyone dares cycle in London

It's the same with pedestrians. It's scary how unaware some pedestrians are of how invisible they can be to cars.

I was driving in Bristol the other day, it was dark and rainy. I still had lots of pedestrians trying to cross the road by running out in front of my car. I was driving slowly (as traffic was moving slowly) and they obviously thought I was going to see them and slow down even further. But I really couldn't see them until last second! Really scary.

Two extremes as far as I can see:

This or this

The latter are obviously a demonstration of pure Darwinism in motion.

Cat ford you're probably one of those cyclists that just does as they please, cuts in front of perfectly safely driven cars and then whines about 'the eeeviilll drivers! I'm so morally superior!'

A truly asinine post. You are wrong about me in every detail.

I saw a cyclist the other day and he had a chevron made out of lights on his front, one on his back and reflective strips on his leggings that caught the light as he pedalled. Oh and one on his helmet too. I just looked and thought "well played".

As a pedestrian, that's the kind of cyclist I like - no chance of his one little light being missed, or merging in with traffic a long way behind. I don't want to step out in front of one and cause an accident.

But the scariest " didn't see it" moment I ever had was with an articulated lorry. It was all black, so you saw headlights and so on, but the sides were not lit. Or if they were, not very well. It passed me standing on a traffic island. It then stopped to do a u-turn. A car went past me too and squealed to a halt just in time, as the back bit was right across the road.

If there had been an accident, all I could have said to the police was that I was something went past, but it was like it was cloaked... like something off Star Trek....

Sorry to divert off a bit. Back to bikes.

A cyclist called out at me last night, for crossing in front of her. She had to screech to a stop.

I was on a pedestrian crossing, with my lights on green. She had no lights, so even though I checked for traffic that might not stop, I didn't see her. And obviously, she tried to come through red lights.

She didn't like it when I pointed all those things out to her.

The police routinely run lights checks near my work. I'm amazed it doesn't seem to be illegal not to have them?

DH has a Light

It projects an image of bike onto the road ahead of him, so he can be seen by pedestrians, and by cars and lorries who might be tempted to turn left across his path 9they can see the image before they see him)

I read first bit of this then serif on school pickup, something appeared from the hedge, slowed to walking pace, it was a man out running, in black shorts and top
and a purple headband barely visible at sll, he was obviously cutting through fields and was about to cross the road forgetting cars use it so if that's how invisible you are at 2:55 think of later on

*set off

ettvatre

I agree: one of DHs biggest gripes as a cyclist is pedestrians who can't be seen, and don't look before they step of the kerb in from of him (he's really visible, as I said earlier). Mostly they are looking at their phones as they do this. He has to be alert for both of them, and has to yell to warn them

cjbk Yikes! My running gear is all black but if I run at night I always wear a high vis.

Re. cyclists, and pedestrians for that matter, of course you shouldn't have to try and make yourself more visible and if you don't want to or it doesn't occur to you then that's fine. But as a more vulnerable road user than one surrounded by metal, I prefer to try and make myself visible and be aware of what's going on around me. This is one of the reasons I don't wear headphones when running.

Narp that light is fabulous.

I've been having a moan all week about pedestrians and cyclists in black. It gets dark really early and when it's raining the other headlights reflect badly, then you get some knob just wander across in front of you in head to toe black.

We had one earlier in the week, stepped out onto a zebra crossing as we reached it, and glared at us when DH had to do an emergency stop. Luckily we were going really slowly but we just couldn't see him. Normally you can see people approaching the crossing but it was too dark.