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Comment by mytochar | Hacker News Reader

My biggest trouble with cyclists at night, as a driver, has always been the ones that don't have any lights on their bike. Sometimes the reflectors don't even reflect very brightly (or aren't present).

When a bike is all lit up, I have no trouble seeing and reacting appropriately to them.

I'm probably not a typical driver, though.

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Do you mean to say that you are worse or better than typical drivers? If you can't see objects in the road, you should slow down.

Are you saying there should be no need for rear lights on cars?

No, but you can't expect everything in the road to be light-emitting. There could very easily be a car in the middle of the road with its lights disabled. There could be a person walking down the road without crazy nanopaint, because he was in a car and wasn't expecting to walk, but the car broke down. There could be a horse or cow in the road.

I still think this doesn't shift any blame away from cyclists who don't use lights. A bicycle is moving, unlike those examples, and you need to be aware of it even when it isn't in your way yet or in the beam of your headlights.

Well, a driver needs to be careful, it's true. At the same time, it behooves a cyclist to take basic precautions to improve his own safety and to make things easier for drivers around him.

I narrowly avoided an accident with a cyclist who was riding at night, without lights, without a helmet, with crappy reflectors, wearing dark clothing. The area wasn't particularly well-lit (obnoxious San Jose low-pressure-sodium orange-hue lighting). The cyclist was riding along a busy street but his bicycle was on the sidewalk, behind a row of parked cars, heading the opposite direction of traffic on that street... and he headed out into the intersection with a side-street at full cycling speed, not pedestrian speed.

I really wouldn't have minded some extra help not-killing the guy, you know?

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