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news
Police mistakenly stop cyclist for flashing rear light
Police stopped a cyclist for having a rear red flashing light last week before Googling it and realising it is legal after all.
Kingsbridge Police, part of Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, posted on social media – a post which now appears to have been removed - that they had stopped a man and reprimanded him for having a flashing rear light on the back of his bicycle, only to post later on with a message saying ‘seems it’s legal. Every day’s a school day’.
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According to Kingsbridge Today the police wrote: ‘I believe it is an offence to have any flashing lights to the rear - however to give a ticket is at an officer’s discretion.’
‘Our current traffic theme is ‘road user visibility’ which means we may stop pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders or cars to advise them about how visible they aren’t being to others.’
- Cycling rear light buyer's guide — make sure you're seen at night
However a few hours later they issued a clarification, saying: ‘Ignore what I said. We were curious and just googled it and it seems it’s now legal. Every day’s a school day.’
According to Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations cyclists must show a front white and rear red light, which can be flashing or steady, as well as rear red reflectors and amber pedal reflectors.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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46 comments
As for reflectors, I bought some 3M™ Scotchlite™ Diamond Grade™ reflective tape, cut small bits and stuck it to most of my pedals.* It weighs nothing, doesn't affect aerodynamics, and who knows it might help stop some arse hitting me.
I've also put black Scotchlite™ tape on my black Canyon frame. It's effectively invisible in the day, but shows up as brillianly reflective at night. I put some red strips of the same stuff on the back of the seatpost.
*Not the speedplays, nothing works for them. Guess I could put some tape on the heels, but I never use them at night anyway.
Don't look into the light ! Stare beyond it
I'm still perplexed at the thought of ANy sane copper pulling a person on a bike for having lights of any description, flashing or steady, unless the batteries were so dead it was just lit.
There are so many drivers illegally lit, either with bulbs out or foglights on when it's not foggy, or dodgy electrics, one wonders where the woddentops found the time.
I personally don't like flashers any more especially on the rear. I found that when I switched from (bright fast) flashers to steady dyno powered lights, I got fewer close passes and drivers took more time. My working theory is that from a distance I don't identify as easily as "just" a cycle. Maybe they think I'm a (very slow) motorbike. It's only my own personal anecdotal experience.
Also bright badly aimed flashers from oncoming cyclists on unlit cycleways are a complete pain as they make it alsmost impossible to see correctly. Point 'em down & set to steady - you're not on a road any more
Funnily enough this issue came up at work yesterday. My manager was trying to wind me up talking about cyclists on the road (to be fair she was only trying to get a rise out of me and not serious) but another colleague did chip in mentioning her husband's experience (again not from an anti-cyclist perspective). She stated that he was in a car which met a group of riders coming the opposite way and they all had flashing front lights. He had to ask the driver to pull over because he could feel an epileptic episode coming on, triggered by the lights. Is this something others have heard about?
To be honest I had never considered this (normally I have two lights , one steady and one flashing, on both my handlebars and seat post but having heard this may reconsider the flashing or at least try and find out which pattern is least likely to trigger an episode in someone).
Photo epilepsy is a real, but rather rare, thing. If it was genuine he should write this up, there haven't (I think ) been any published reports of this as a trigger.
Things that puzzle me though:
How does he manage behind tractors, bin wagons etc.?
Why not just shut his eyes and turn his head away?
I hope he doesn't have a driving licence.
They are stopping pedestrians for not being 'visible'?
Why aren't they stopping the drivers to advise them they are either driving too fast or not looking sufficiently carefully?
If they stopped all the drivers illegally using spot lamps where I live, they wouldn't have time to worry about cyclists!
Does anybody know if amber reflective paint would satisfy the need for pedal reflectors? Or is it that they have to phsycially be reflectors on the pedals?
You legally need everything that the RVLR requires. Otherwise you might get a fixed penalty notice. And that's about it. But, provided you comply with the spirit of the regs you are unlikely to get stopped, much less issued with a ticket.
The main issue is how a breach of the Regs would translate into contributory negligence in the event of you being hit. As yet untested. My view is that if you are lit up like the proverbial Xmas tree the chances of con neg because you had no reflectors, or no BS standard lights, are slim to non existent.
There is a "phenomena" of drunk or tired drivers smashing into the solid red rear lights of parked cars as they try to stay on the road by follownig what they think is the car in front of them. For this reason flashing lights are better - the are recognizable as not being car rear lights.
Flashing lights are more effective at gaining attention, which is why aircraft don't use steady lights. I don't know whether it makes it less easy to gauge distance, but I think that getting their attention is a necessary starting point.
'Flashing lights are more effective at gaining attention'
Not true.
'which is why aircraft don't use steady lights. '
Not true.
'...flashing lights are better - the are recognizable as not being car rear lights. '
Absolute nonsense.
It's easy, this topic. Apply any of common sense, logic, science, a knowledge of how the human eye and/or brain works, and you'll come up with the right answer. Apply 'it's what I think so it must be right', and you're probably wrong.
I don't much care who is right or wrong in this argument but I am intrigued by the above statement. If I spotted a red, flashing light up ahead my first thought would not be, "Hello, there's a car."
Why, pray, am I talking absolute nonsense?
1) flashing lights are not better*, simple science backs this up. Ergo nonsense.
2) They are recognisable as not being car rear lights - correct. This statement on its own, without being appended to the earlier fallacy, would stand up, but would then raise the question - why would you *want* to be recognised as 'not a car'? What possible benefit is there, other than for a poor driver to think 'oh, when I get closer, I won't need to give them as much room as I first thought'...?
*other than for extending battery life, but that wasn't the crux of your argument.
Mmmm. Methinks you are muddying the water here in order to escape from a trap of your own making. In the space of a couple of paragraphs you have described the statement as both correct and absolute nonsense.
I'm afraid I don't believe in parallel universes and I'm definitely not convinced it can be both of those things so we'll call it a day at this point.
So why do all the cranes and dumper trucks being used near me on the A9 dualling have flashing yellow lights on the roof? As camouflage?
"At night, at night, wear something bright,
Wear something bright at night."
Who remembers that TV advert. You have to sing it!
I suspect they could have arrested him for not having a bell though??!!
I don't think so, whilst a bike must be sold with a bell as far as I'm aware there is no law to say you can't remove it as soon as you leave the shop, or even that a shop can't remove a bell from a bike, as long as it's not at the same time as it's being bought.
Personally I'm not complaining about the police no knowing the law on bike lights correctly, as I suspect very few people on here have got pedal reflectors fitted, and a lot probably don't have the required rear reflector either!!! But as has been said above, more attention being payed to people with no lights, or no effective lights, would be time better spent.
Are there any BS certified lights available? Most that I see aren't, not because they don't meet the criteria but, I suspect, because it's uneconomic for the manufacturers to pay the £1000s necessary to have them tested and certified. The last time I looked the BSI would even charge you about £50 just to download a pdf of the criteria.
More of a problem with LED rear lights is that becuase they appear to ast forever, a lot of people don't recognise when their light has dimmed down to the luminosity of a fag-end.
So you would expect them to be stopping people with no lights, or very faint ones.
A flashing light is more visible (even better when used with a steady light as well).
As the law changed in 2005, I would have hoped the police would check the current law before starting stopping people.
They could have got out a stop watch and checked the light was flashing at the correct frequency.
I bought a pair of those flashing bollocks.
It didn't change how many near misses or close passes I got so I concluded that since no-one on earth could miss a bright red flashing nut sack if they were looking, it doesn't matter how visible you make yourself. They either don't look or don't care.
It was the case that LED lights were illegal as they didn't conform to the BS standard for bicycle lights which stipulated a filament type bulb had to be used. Has the law been changed on this does anyone know?
The law has been changed MANY times since then, the most relevant bit is what i posted above. White to front, red to back and if flashing more than 4 candela. It doesn't matter what creates the light.
Where did you find a 2015 amendment? I've checked and the last amendment to that bit was 2005. Did you mean 2005?
I think that the law now recognises flashing but we still have this awkward thing whereby if a flashing light is ALSO capable of emitting a steady light then it has to conform to BS standard. So, if this light was the only light and wasn't BS then it's technically illegal. Though that was not the challenge here.
One of those days, misread the list, 2005 is the latest for the mainland, there is a 2015 for NIreland.
The BS is actually, IMO a red herring, as if you read a standard, not just BS applies, if you got german k mark you should be ok as equivalent.
Mind you in my friday state, amendment 6 and 7 of the 2005 seem to conflict with each other, one is saying flash ok regardless the other is saying flash is bad if both....
Yeah, problem is very few of any of them (front or rear) are BS standard or equivalent. But, whilst I don't think it's a red herring, I do think that that part of the Regulations is outdated and pretty much irrelevant.
In theory you could be done for having a single flashing rear but that would be quite overzealous indeed.
i dotn think it has been changed, as i bought some lights recently and they said they didnt conform to the satndard as they were LED
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