On 7/7/2017 10:33 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-07-06 20:11, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 13:02:57 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-07-06 12:40, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/6/2017 3:14 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-07-06 12:05, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/6/2017 10:54 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-07-05 17:49, John B. wrote:

Yet people have been riding long distances on bicycles for years
and
years. The first Paris - Brest - Paris randonnée was held in
1891. An
essentially non-stop bicycle ride of 1,200 km. The British, of
course,
do it better with the 1433 km London Edinburgh London 2017 and the
'mericans have the Boston-Montreal-Boston, again a 1,200 km ride
but
no longer an official randonnée and now strictly a permanent that
anyone could ride on their own in a self-supported manner while
still
receiving recognition (validation) from Randonneurs USA.

Think of it, 126 years of successful long distance bicycle riding
without Joerg built lights.


It's simple. Most humans have a habit of accepting current
state-of-the-art as "that's as good as it gets". I don't, and I
derive
most of my income from not thinking that way. And yes, I already had
bicycles with real electrical systems when I was a teenager.

The detail you're missing is that people have always ridden
_successfully_ without the systems you deem necessary.


As I said, people got used to that this is all they are going to get.
Just like people get used to walking in worn shoes if they can't
afford new ones.


There are always people who are into overkill. Some of those will
claim
or pretend that their favorite overkill item is actually a necessity.
But that's disproven by every person who does well without the
overkill
item.


A vehicle where the light does not go out or dim way down is IMO not
overkill. The lighting "system" bicyles have would never pass muster
at type certification for motor vehicles. There are good reasons
why not.


For just one example: I'm just back from another club ride. About 15
people were on the ride. Two of them had the newly fashionable
daytime
rear blinkies. This particular ride has occurred once per week every
week except in winter for, oh, perhaps ten years. Nobody has ever
been
hit by a car, despite the thousands of person-miles ridden (GASP!)
without blinkies.


I have never been hit from behind either but the number of close calls
has noticeably decreased since I have bright rear lights. Mission
accomplished. The best is, this was never very expensive to
accomplish.

Now you can stick the head in the sand again and pretend it ain't
so :-)

We've been over this multiple times, but:

If your number of close calls for hits-from-behind has gone way
down, it
must have been pretty high to begin with. By contrast, I almost never
experience such a close call; therefore I'd never be able to see a big
reduction.

Why don't those close calls happen to me? Because those close calls
are
almost always due in part to rider error - specifically, inviting close
passes by riding too far to the right.


Yeah, right. The woman who rode in the lane on Blue Ravine died because
of that. The other woman in the pickup truck who was drunk tried to
evade but the lane was now too narrow and *BAM*

[...]

You mean to say that you were run into on Blue Ravine and died? Or
this is just something that you saw on the TV?


I didn't have an operation to turn me into a woman :-)

It was shortly after we moved here about 20 years ago. That and several
other serious accidents combined with (or rather, caused by) the lack of
cycling infrastructure resulted in me and lots of others to mothball the
bikes for many years. While those accidents were not always fatal many
were what the medical folks call "life-changing" where riders became
crippled for the rest of their lives.


But even so, www.statista.com reported to be something in the
neighborhood of 66.52 million bicycle riders in Spring 2016.... and
one woman died?


That was one example of many. We have about one death a month in the
area, on average. Many are hit from behind.

Yes, we know your area is far more dangerous than the rest of the world.

Actually 726 died in the U.S. in 2014 ( the latest year I could find
without looking very hard) and in 2014 the above site tells me that
there were 67.33 million cyclists. So one cyclist was killed for every
10,096.4 that rode a bike. Obviously, statistically, bicycle riding is
a very dangerious pastime!

Perhaps the government should be encouraged to ban these dangerious
devices. Save Lives! Ban a Bike!


I read about them in our local paper and those are real stories, real
people, real grieving families and all that. People like Justin Vega:

http://fox40.com/2017/05/26/sacramen...d-25-year-old/

That crash happened at night. The question is, did that rider have a
taillight?

I ask because a high percentage of nighttime car-bike crashes involve
unlit cyclists. If the people promoting useless daytime lights shifted
their energy to promoting nighttime lights, many more lives would be saved.

Daytime lights are a superstition. Nighttime lights are a legal and
practical requirement.

--
- Frank Krygowski