Stateman Journal: Safety must come first while riding bikes - With less daylight, many precautions become crucial

The few minutes of after-work twilight that commuters and club bicycle riders are enjoying are about to disappear with the return Sunday to standard time. “Right now we have daylight maybe for a few minutes, just barely, but when daylight savings time ends it will be fully dark before we even get started,” said Joanne Heilinger, who — with husband John Henry Maurice — leads a 6:15 p.m. Salem Bicycle Club ride each Wednesday.

“It’ll be pretty much lights-on from the get-go,” said Steve Scott, who coordinates rides at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays for Scott’s Cycling and Fitness.

Heilinger and Scott have years-of-experience advice for bicyclists who choose — or by happenstance are forced — to ride after dark during the winter.

The keys to staying safe are good equipment, route selection, common sense, and — if possible — riding in a pack.

“We advocate riding in groups because there’s safety in numbers,” Heilinger said. “The more people and the more lights, the more visible the whole group is.”

Heilinger’s group has never had a collision with a motor vehicle in its four years of operation and Scott’s group has ridden for about a decade without incident.

“We’ve had a couple situations where people didn’t pay close attention and ran into each other,” Scott said. “But we’ve never had even a close call with a car on an evening ride. We’ve had worse luck with traffic in the daytime than at night.”

The reason is that the riders in Scott’s convoys are equipped to the hilt.

“If you’re coming from the rear there’s this wall of strobe lights you see in front of you, and nobody knows what it is,” he said. “And if our group is coming at you there’s this huge, huge glow, just a huge volume of light. If you have 15 or 20 people out there with these high-powered lights it’s a pretty odd sight going down the road.”

Heilinger and Maurice lead more than a half dozen rides a month, day and night, for Salem Bicycle Club, and put in about 15,000 of miles a year pedaling the pavement.

“What John and I have found, personally, is that the more money you spend on a light, the more effective it is,” said Heilinger, who in no way is connected with the sales of such equipment. “It’s a matter of how much light it provides for you to see the rocks and the bumps in the road, as well as the light it provides so a motorist can see you coming down the road.”

Headlights, reflectors

Oregon law requires — at the minimum — at headlight visible from 500 feet to the front and a reflector visible from 600 feet to the rear for night riding on public highways.

But cyclists say that riding at night with only a reflector on the back of a bike is pure silliness.

“Some tail lights are solid red lights, but personally, I feel like a blinky one creates more visibility,” Heilinger said. “It makes you stand out as something different than another motorist.”

Where the light is placed is also important.

“If you put it on your clothing, sometimes the angle is such that it isn’t as visible as if you get it mounted on your frame or your saddle bag,” she said. “If you’re riding with traffic, as you should, then having something on the left side is best. I’ve seen people put them on a strap around their ankle or on their upper arm, and I think those are effective. A blinky is good, and more than one is even better.”

The market is flooded with blinking red LED strobe lights, priced from $15 to $25. Picking out one of those is relatively simple.

But a headlight, Heilinger said, can run $15 to $500. Most good ones are either halogen or LED.

“You want something that the battery life, the battery charge, is going to last as long as you’re going to be out there,” Heilinger said. “Some lights only last an hour or two.”

Two headlights are best sellers at Scott’s Cycle Shop.

“We have basic battery-powered front headlights in the $20 to $35 price range, and they make you legal,” Scott said. “But they really aren’t bright enough or high enough wattage that you can see well with them.”

The MiNewt and the TriNewt, both made by NiteRider, are the lights he recommends most often.

“They’re LED style and they’re very, very bright,” Scott said. “They put out an amazing amount of light, probably more than one headlight on a vehicle, and they’re a blue-style light — really a nice light.”

Heilinger rides with a halogen light.

“A few years ago there were people walking on the sidewalk and I was in the bike lane right beside them, and one of them said, ‘You’re blinding me,’ ” Heilinger said.

And that’s what she wants.

“I want my headlight to be as bright as a car headlight if it possibly can be,” she said.

The more expensive headlights will be ones that not only put out a lot of light but also hold their charge for a long time. All the best headlights are rechargeable, and most should be put on the charger after each ride.

“Generators kind of went away when mountain bikes became popular,” Scott said. “You can’t use a generator with a knobby tire because it light-pulses because it’s not in contact with the tire 100 percent of the time. The knobby kind of killed the generator market, plus they’re heavy, bulky, kind of an odd-looking thing. Technology overtook them.”

Heilinger said: “There’s probably a few retro ones still out there, but you don’t see them very often. The generators were powered by pedal stroke, by your wheel going around, and when the wheel stops turning your light shuts down, which is not effective in traffic, even where there are street lights. If you stop at a stop sign you aren’t visible.”

Light-colored clothing

Scott and Heilinger both recommend light-colored clothing that’s equipped with reflective striping. If clothes aren’t purchased with the striping sewn in, reflective bands can be added.

“Anything that makes your clothes stand out is what you want,” Heilinger said. “The lime green is pretty effective as far as creating visibility. Avoid dark clothing because, if you read the newspaper and read about somebody killed at night, you pretty much almost always see in print that they were wearing dark clothing.”

That’s particularly good advice for a commuter, who typically would be riding alone.

“Commuters should stick to roads that have bike lanes or ones that are residential streets where there’s slow traffic,” Heilinger said.

Scott reiterated that.

“We don’t ride in those places without bike lanes, even in the daylight,” he said.

Ride against traffic

The other thing that no cyclist should do — but a single rider in particular — is ride against the flow of traffic.

“Doing that is a set-up for disaster,” Heilinger said, “especially on a one-way street. “A motorist entering traffic is going to be looking only in the direction from which cars are coming, not the opposite direction, and you might never be seen.”

Scott’s rides leave from the bike shop in downtown Salem twice weekly and Heilinger’s ride leaves from Steam Heat Coffee House in Keizer.

“Our rides may be canceled if the weather is questionable, and what we consider questionable is if it’s so foggy that we can’t see,” Heilinger said. “If it were pouring rain it probably wouldn’t cancel us. The only thing that has stopped us is fog. If it’s very hard for us to see, we know that we’re not very visible, either, and that’s critical.”

Her rides often head out of town, away from traffic, toward Windsor Island.

“The thing I was say is that riders should be visible and predictable,” Heilinger said. “That’s going to increase safety. Be as visible you can be, whether it’s clothing or reflective material or lights. It’s being wise in the way you ride and in where you ride.”

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