Okay, I'm not a cyclist, and I will admit to being irritated by cyclists on the road in general. I will admit that some cyclists need to be on the road for whatever reasons, and that I do not know enough about people's individual circumstances to complain about them being on the road, and that it is unreasonable for me to begrudge them the road to use, but there is a large number of cyclists who do a particular unsafe thing on the road, particularly at this time of year, and I would like to take this opportunity to educate them on a widespread, yet illegal, practice. This is the unforgiveable crime of... FLASHING LIGHTS.
Flashing lights on bicycles is one of the least acceptable things on the planet for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, as I have stated several times already in this blog post, it is illegal. Yep. The law to consult regarding lighting on a bicycle is The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989 (which is actually a thing, as you will note) and Part II, Section 13, Paragraph 1 states "Save as provided in paragraph (2), no vehicle shall be fitted with a lamp which automatically emits a flashing light." The "paragraph (2)" this refers to is a list of exceptions, which include "direction indicators, a headlamp fitted to an emergency vehicle, a warning beacon or special warning lamp, a lamp or illuminated sign fitted to a vehicle used for police purposes, a green warning lamp used as an anti-lock brake indicator, or lamps forming part of a traffic sign." These are the only exceptions. You will note that "standard bicycles" are not on the list, unless you are using the bicycle for police purposes or you have modified your bicycle to use direction indicators. You will also note that nobody does either of these things. Therefore, any flashing lights on a bicycle are illegal, and further perusal of the RVLR 1989 (specifically, the table shown on Schedule 1) shows that bicycles are required to have a continuous dipped-beam headlamp, for which the only exceptions are "a vehicle having a maximum speed not exceeding 15mph, a vehicle used before 1st April 1986 being an agricultural vehicle or works truck, or a vehicle used before 1st January, 1931". This means that your bicycle is not exempt from having a continuous dipped-beam headlamp unless it's extremely slow (this does not include one's personal performance on the bicycle, but the bicycle itself), or more than eighty-three years old. A continuous rear position lamp is also obligatory, with no exceptions whatsoever. So, even if you're riding a rickety old penny farthing which is more than eighty-three years old, you're not getting out of that one.
Now we have examined the law minutely (I should totally be a lawyer), we must consider why these laws exist. Having pondered the phenomenon of flashing lights at length, I have come to the conclusion that some cyclists opt for flashing lights because they are under the mistaken impression that they make the cyclist easier to see. This is a myth. There have been no studied indicating that flashing lights are easier to see than continuous ones, and I would argue that flashing lights are actually incredibly dangerous for a number of reasons.
The first example which immediately comes to mind is that flashing lights are inherently distracting. Say you're somewhere dark and you see a blinking light ahead of you. Where do you look? The flashing light. And then you're not concentrating fully on everything else around you, even is the light is miles away. If you were driving and you were distracted by a flashing light in the distance, if, say, a child were to run out in front of you, the chance of you seeing the child in time to avoid hitting them would be significantly diminished, and the cyclist would be at least partly responsible.
Secondly, I would like the reader to consider the concept of parallax. For anybody who doesn't know what parallax is, this is the concept which considers the fact that if you move your head from side to side, for example, objects that are closer to you will appear to move more in relation to objects behind them. When driving, this is an important method used subconsciously by the driver to determine how far away obstacles are, particularly in the dark when the only visible part of a bicycle is the light. If the driver can see a bicycle's light hardly moving at all, it can be deduced that it's still quite a way away and that action is not required imminently to avoid it, whereas if it's moving more the bicycle would be closer and the driver would need to take action to avoid it more quickly. However, if the driver can only see a flashing red light, it is impossible to tell how far the light has moved in between flashes, and so the tool of parallax is rendered meaningless. Therefore, it can be very difficult indeed to tell whether the flashing light of a bicycle is a mile away, or five metres.
My third example would be that there would be a possibility, however small, that a flashing light could possibly trigger epileptic seizures in certain road users. While my understanding of the law is that epilepsy sufferers are not allowed to drive unless they are taking medication for it, the small possibility remains that there may be undiagnosed cases among road users, which if triggered needlessly could result in disaster.
I would like to finish this blog post with a brief summary: flashing lights are illegal, potentially extremely hazardous, reduce your visibility and put everybody on the road, particularly the cyclists using them, in danger. If you are a cyclist, I would urge you to ditch the flashing lights and get a continuous pair instead. I get that a lot of drivers drive dangerously around you, and have no patience at all for you, and I will admit to being guilty of this myself on occasion, but it would be a mistake to say that cyclists are entirely blameless. It is difficult to have sympathy for the people who do not understand the effect their actions can have on other people, and this goes both ways. I think it's entirely reasonable to say that if you respect the law, we drivers will respect your rights to the road. Fair? :)
Thank you for reading, and please pass on this message to as many people as you can. Let's make the roads a safer place for everybody to be on.
Lowri :D
EDIT: So apparently some twonk amended the law in 2005 to allow flashing lights instead of continuous ones. I stand by my argument that they are unsafe, although I retract my claims of illegality. In their place, I would like to insert a "they SHOULD be illegal" message on the grounds that I stand by the rest of my argument.
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