Canadian cycling campaigners call for mandatory bike lights in the daytime

achfraser wrote:

To equate my son choosing to use a light to make himself more visible, with a woman dressing down to avoid sexual harassment or assault, or a government making burkas compulsory, is a considerable stretch.

Yes and no. They're both examples of people adopting their own behaviour/appearance solely in order to avoid becoming a victim of an action that is wholly in the control of others. To make such changes mandatory is not an intervention to be taken lightly, especially where others' circumstances (as you yourself point out) differ significantly and/or there is limited or no evidence as to its efficacy.

In the case of riding a bike on roads we share with cars I would contend that we are never in a situation that is "wholly in the control of others". To accept that premise is to put the entire weight of responsibility for the integration of mixed traffic onto shoulders of drivers.

I'm not that fatalistic. I choose to pay attention to cyclists when I drive, and prefer to be deliberate about how I ride. I read an article recently that argued it was wise to think like a cyclist while driving and think like a driver when cycling...to try to anticipate what the other might do, in an effort to make life easier for both. Seems like a reasonable response to me.

(And I still see a fundamental difficulty equating discussions about collisions between bikes and cars with discussions about being the victim of sexual assault or harassment. The latter is done with malicious intent and is about exercising power over the person assaulted. I suspect the number of cases of a driver hitting a cyclist that fit that description is vanishingly rare. I'm sure there are drivers who put cyclists at risk in all sorts of way...inattention, impairment, poor decision making, etc, etc...but I have yet to encounter a malicious one. Perhaps I've been lucky but, if so, I've been lucky for forty years.)

achfraser wrote:

In the case of riding a bike on roads we share with cars I would contend that we are never in a situation that is "wholly in the control of others".

I entirely disagree, and I can cite a number of legal cases where cyclists have, for example, been struck from behind and explicitly deemed blameless, which I would suggest prove the point.

achfraser wrote:

(And I still see a fundamental difficulty equating discussions about collisions between bikes and cars with discussions about being the victim of sexual assault or harassment. The latter is done with malicious intent and is about exercising power over the person assaulted. I suspect the number of cases of a driver hitting a cyclist that fit that description is vanishingly rare. I'm sure there are drivers who put cyclists at risk in all sorts of way...inattention, impairment, poor decision making, etc, etc...but I have yet to encounter a malicious one. Perhaps I've been lucky but, if so, I've been lucky for forty years.)

I agree, but there are grey areas in all of these which illuminate some commonalities. And while the act of having a collision may not be deliberate, contributory acts such as driving while using a phone *are*, even though the mens rea is somewhat different. The main thing, though, is about the response: do you seek to change the behaviour of those committing the offences, do you seek to change the behaviour of the victims, or do you seek to address the problem by other, environmental means? Too often the choice is the one that's least fair, least effective, and has the most negative side-effects.

Related:
http://singletrackworld.com/columns/2015/02/bez-the-wedge/

achfraser wrote:

(And I still see a fundamental difficulty equating discussions about collisions between bikes and cars with discussions about being the victim of sexual assault or harassment. The latter is done with malicious intent and is about exercising power over the person assaulted. I suspect the number of cases of a driver hitting a cyclist that fit that description is vanishingly rare. I'm sure there are drivers who put cyclists at risk in all sorts of way...inattention, impairment, poor decision making, etc, etc...but I have yet to encounter a malicious one. Perhaps I've been lucky but, if so, I've been lucky for forty years.)

The exercise of unequal power is common to both situations. What may be different is intent, but one can never actually know another's intent. Indeed, I would argue that intention is, in practice, irrelevant (and the law might be more usefully protective if it were also irrelevant in law). I have no ability to know whether the woman who forced me into the ditch by left hookimg yesterday did so because she was malicious, or incompetent, or desperately upset about her personal life, or simply drunk. I also have no motive to care.

achfraser wrote:

One Canadian's perspective. The whole victim blaming argument is a red herring. Yes, drivers should be aware, and drive appropriately and carefully, but not all do. The bar to get a driver's licence is not that high and enforcement is intermittent, not out of malice, but because police cannot be everywhere.

I bought one of the new Bontrager daytime lights for my son. Although we live in a city with pretty good infrastructure and driver awareness of cycling, he now goes to school in a city with neither. He commutes to school by bike for a few months of the year...basically until it gets well below freezing or the snow starts to fly in significant quantities, which might be as soon as late October. He'll start up again in late March/early April when things melt.

Should drivers there be more with it, and responsible for driving appropriately around cyclists? Of course, but as a guy who makes a living in risk assessment I have a pretty useful understanding of how much easier prevention is when compared to recovery. No light will absolutely prevent a collision but it can reduce the probability. So am I going to take reasonable steps to make my son visible? Also, of course. It's not victim blaming...it's avoiding becoming a victim.

It's opening up a whole new world of victim blaming. There are enough drivers who think they can interprete the law in order to justify the poor driving towards cyclists. Plenty who think they can hurl abuse at cyclists around laws that they believe exist, bells and helmets or having to ride as close to the kerb as possible, for example.
We don't need to add another level of shit that drivers can use to blame cyclists for the misfortune of being run over when choosing not to adopt.

I hear what you're saying about a higher level of visibility to protect yourself (and agree), but it's a choice, and shouldn't be allowed to be shoehorned into law. Not unless pedestrians have to follow suit and cars have to sport the fluoro chevrons that motorway maintenance vehicles have. Etc...

achfraser wrote:

Should drivers there be more with it, and responsible for driving appropriately around cyclists? Of course, but as a guy who makes a living in risk assessment I have a pretty useful understanding of how much easier prevention is when compared to recovery. No light will absolutely prevent a collision but it can reduce the probability. So am I going to take reasonable steps to make my son visible? Also, of course. It's not victim blaming...it's avoiding becoming a victim.

I have to say I have yet to see anyone victim blame who didn't claim as they did so that "I'm not victim-blaming".

Besides, the original article is about a request to make such lights _compulsory_.
A woman might choose to dress-down to try and avoid harrassmen [agreeing with her or not, its her own private business] but that's not the same as the state making burkas compulsory, is it?

rookybiker wrote:

I guess this has to be taken in context. Cars are already required to run daytime lights in parts of Canada. With many hours of twilight per year in the high latitudes, some people feel it is better to remove the guesswork from when to switch the headlights on. Not that I agree with that...

Doesn't much of the population of Canada live at similar latitudes to the UK? Might be an argument for winter but seems both completely pointless as bike lights aren't any use in sunshine, and a recharge/battery problem if you're out for a day or longer, for the long summer days.

Northernbike wrote:

rookybiker wrote:

I guess this has to be taken in context. Cars are already required to run daytime lights in parts of Canada. With many hours of twilight per year in the high latitudes, some people feel it is better to remove the guesswork from when to switch the headlights on. Not that I agree with that...

Doesn't much of the population of Canada live at similar latitudes to the UK? Might be an argument for winter but seems both completely pointless as bike lights aren't any use in sunshine, and a recharge/battery problem if you're out for a day or longer, for the long summer days.

80% of Canada's population lives within 200 miles of the border with the USA - Toronto is almost on the border, and Vancouver and Montreal are within 30 miles of it.

All major Canadian cities and the great majority of its population live at a more southerly latitude than anywhere in the UK. Montreal is on the same latitude as Paris. Shortness of winter days is not really an issue.

PEI is the bit of Canada you fly over just after you leave Maine in the USA, when flying from Boston or New York to the UK. It looks almost deserted from the sky, apart from huge wheat fields.

My tuppence worth, how do you get a light with enough battery to last a long ride with enough output to make it better than pointless in daylight.

re What fields in PEI...Potato fields more likely

rookybiker wrote:

All major Canadian cities and the great majority of its population live at a more southerly latitude than anywhere in the UK. Montreal is on the same latitude as Paris. Shortness of winter days is not really an issue.

Shortness of winter days isn't really the issue. Temperature and snow depth, in most places other than Vancouver, certainly are. I live in Ottawa, a city with a fair number of keen cyclists and reasonably good infrastructure for them (although some wouldn't agree with that characterization). The level of cycling enthusiasm drops off pretty rapidly when it gets to -20c. Although I am seeing more and more fat bikes used as commuters they are clearly the exception.

rookybiker wrote:

I guess this has to be taken in context. Cars are already required to run daytime lights in parts of Canada. With many hours of twilight per year in the high latitudes, some people feel it is better to remove the guesswork from when to switch the headlights on. Not that I agree with that...

Prince Edward Island is one of the more northerly parts of Canada that is actually populated. It's not very big, and it's capital is at 46° North.

Lizard Point, the most southerly part of the island of Great Britain, is at 49.959° North

Re: PEI being one of the more northerly, populated parts of Canada...Uhhh. no, it's neither. Best look at a map. There is an awful lot of Canada north of PEI, and quite a bit of that is populated, particularly when you look at the Western Provinces. In fact the only bits that aren't are Nova Scotia and southern Ontario. (I realize "populated" is a relative term...we do have a lot of empty space.)

It's also worth noting that the entire province of PEI has a population of about 140,000, although this goes up quite a bit in summer when you count tourists.

achfraser wrote:

(I realize "populated" is a relative term...we do have a lot of empty space.)

The population density of Canada is 1/50th of the UK, and 1/100th that of England.
To a first approximation nobody lives there! Its mostly moose.

So plenty of room for dedicated cycle infrastructure, I'd say!
[I may be overlooking some other practical considerations, granted]

rookybiker wrote:

Cars are already required to run daytime lights in parts of Canada.

In Austria, daytime lights for cars became compulsory in 2005 but the law was withdrawn again at the end of 2007 when incident numbers didn't go down but instead rose further. So even for cars the effect is a bit dubious.

In any case, bicycles are not cars. The main argument for car daytime lights (at least in Austria) was the danger of overtaking on country roads (we used to say all Austrians think they're Niki Lauda!). When you drove at the speed limit of 100kph, you'd get people overtaking at 120kph, and if oncoming cars also do well above 120kph, they approach each other at about 100 metres per second (!). So you have to see a car at least from about 1 kilometres distance to attempt an overtake; and this is on country roads through forests and mountains with varying light conditions! It's much worse for motorbikes, as they travel at the same speed but are even more difficult to see.

But bicycles rarely travel at 120kph, and they also don't take up the full width of the lane, so there is much less risk of a head-on-collision during an overtake. So the scenario for which bright front lights are suggested just isn't the same for bicycles as for cars.

As far as I know, the law in Austria was repealed because there was an element of risk compensation. With lights, people thought they can see all cars from far away and attempted more risky overtakes in dodgy conditions.

rookybiker wrote:

I guess this has to be taken in context. Cars are already required to run daytime lights in parts of Canada.

It's not part of Canada...it's the entire country. All vehicles built after December 1, 1989 have daytime running lights (front only) that come on when you start the car. A decade before that I was earning a Military Driver's Licence as a Canadian reservist. We were required to have lights on at all times as their studies showed that it reduced the risk of collision significantly. That had been a rule in the Canadian armed forces long before I got involved.