Bicycle Lights

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31142, 19 August 1966, Page 10

Bicycle Lights

Sir, —I should be interested to know the Transport Department’s ruling on bicycles using dynamo lighting. These lights are effective only while the bicycle is moving. This means that cyclists waiting to turn a corner have no lights on their bicycles. Recently I was in a car turning right out of a busy city street into a side street. There were two persons on bicycles waiting, well to the centre of the road, to turn right out of that side street. As their lights were not working at the time we did not see them until we had completed the turn and were nearly abreast of them. Had we taken that corner a little more sharply, we could not have helped but hit them. Theoretically, such an accident should not happen. But it could, so easily, especially on side roads with no centre markings. Does the Road Code ruling that bicycles must have adequate lights for night riding not apply when a bicycle is stationary?—Yours, etc., C. R. MARKS. August 10, 1966. [The district officer of the Transport Department (Mr D. L. Hogan) replies: “Under the Traffic Regulations it is an offence to ride a bicycle without lights, and in the interests of road safety this must apply when the cyclist is waiting at an intersection at night. The type of lighting referred to is in general use and cyclists using it should be made aware of its shortcomings.”]