Canadian cycling campaigners call for mandatory bike lights in the daytime

A Canadian cycling campaign says that daytime running lights would make cyclists more visible during the day and is pushing for them to be made mandatory.

Mike Connolly, the executive director of Cycling PEI (Prince Edward Island), told CBC News: "The number-one priority for cyclists is to be visible and the flashing, white light will help. We strongly recommend for cyclists' own safety that they adopt the white light, especially for daytime running."

Cyling PEI made the recommendation in a recent meeting with representatives of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. Graham Miner, the safety director for the Department of Highways, described it as "an interesting, and probably not a bad idea” and said that the proposal was under review. "I guess the rule of thumb is always see and be seen."

We’ve raised the topic of daytime bike lights a couple of times here on road.cc, most recently in August after Trek advocated the use of rear lights during the day. The firm argues that using a light during the day makes sense because that’s when about 80 per cent of cycling incidents occur – although it is of course also when most cycling occurs.

Prince Edward Island already has a mandatory cycle helmet law, but this summer police issued fewer tickets for this than ever before, saying that enforcement was ‘not a priority’.

Deputy chief of Charlottetown police, Gary McGuigan, explained:

"The numbers are down from past years. The bicycle helmet awareness programme didn't run this summer. That would be part of the reason. The other part would be that we concentrated our efforts this summer on distracted driving — cell phones, texting — so we'll probably see a spike in those numbers and as expected, a drop in the bicycle helmet numbers."