why making sure you can be seen can save your life

why making sure you can be seen can save your life

LIKE MOTORCYCLES OR PEDESTRIANS, CYCLISTS ARE BUT A blip on the radar of most motor vehicle drivers. This is why making sure you can be seen can save your life. Contrary to how the media portrays cyclists, most of them are also drivers themselves. As you begin your journey on the bike, you’ll likely start to pay more attention to cyclists when you’re driving a car, noticing which of them are easy to spot on the road and which aren’t. Then you can follow the lead of the noticeable ones. As far as gear goes, this is just one aspect of the new pieces you’ll already be investing in. Here are some tips on how to help you stand out in the peripheral vision of drivers.

Keep Your Clothing Bright 

This is a challenge for many cyclists because bright clothing is harder to keep clean of road grit and accidental brushes with bicycle grease. Invest in some good stain lifter and keep your colors bold.

Look for Reflective Accents in Clothing 

In this high-tech world, there are many ways to make fabrics more reflective, from bits of coating to piping along the seams. Look for clothes that place strategic reflective fabrics or coatings in places where cars will throw their headlights—particularly the sides and back. Some gloves have reflective bits to help hand signals light up. Rain jackets in particular should have good bits of reflection since in most states, cars are required to drive with their lights on in the rain.

Look for Reflective Accents in Your Bicycle’s Gear—or Add Some On 

These days, everything from fenders to saddlebags to helmets come with reflective surfaces. If they don’t or if you’d like to add more, there are options from simple reflective tape to fun, bicycle-centric decorative reflective stickers to make both your bike and your personality shine.

Lights Are the Best (and Sometimes Mandatory) 

If you’re riding at night, most municipalities in the United States have laws requiring cyclists to have lights to help with visibility. But cover of darkness isn’t the only place they come in handy. Rain makes most vehicles lose a good percentage of their clear sight lines. Everyone can be enveloped on a foggy day. In general, you’ll want at least one front and rear light, and if you ride where it’s particularly dangerous, you might want a few of each—especially in the rear since you’ll be riding with the flow of traffic and the most common accidents either come from behind or from someone passing you then making a right-hand turn in front of you.
Lights vary from inexpensive, non-rechargeable battery-powered LEDs to mid-range USB rechargeable lights you can conveniently plug into your computer to motorcycle-strength lights with large, heavy batteries—these last are a big investment but they both help you be seen and also light up the road enough that it’s almost as bright as riding during the day. How much you want to invest in your light should be proportional to how much riding you do in the early morning or late evening hours.