Skip to main content
2012BlogRoad Rights

Road Rights – Bike Lights: When Do You Need Them?

By January 9, 2012October 23rd, 2021No Comments

As dedicated cyclists have long known, cycling is not just a fair-weather activity. Day or night, rain or shine, cyclists ride. Now that winter has arrived, you may find yourself spending at least some time biking in the dark. That means you’re going to have to run cycling lights and reflectors.

Usually, we think of “darkness” as being equivalent to “nighttime.” In fact, darkness includes much more than nighttime. The Uniform Vehicle Code, which serves as a suggested set of traffic laws for the states to adopt, defines darkness to include “any other time when visibility is not sufficient to render clearly discernible any person or vehicle on the highway at a distance of 1,000 feet.” This means that if there’s fog, a blizzard, or heavy rain, it may be a “period of darkness” under the law.

What kind of lighting does the law require? The specific requirements depend upon the state you are riding in (and if you are crossing a state line, you will need to meet the requirements of both states), but generally speaking, you’ll need to be equipped with both passive and active lighting.

Passive lighting, such as reflectors, doesn’t require you to do anything to make it work. By federal regulation, every new bike intended for use on the road comes equipped with reflectors. Once you’ve bought the bike, it’s perfectly legal for you to remove the reflectors, if that’s your thing. But while it’s legal to ride that bike without reflectors, what’s not legal is riding your bike during “periods of darkness” without the required reflectors. So if you’ve removed the reflectors from your bike, or if you bought a used bike that is missing reflectors, you will need to put reflectors back on the bike to make it legal for riding in the dark.

Now, in at least one state (Oregon, where I live) it’s legal to ride with reflective material on your clothing in lieu of reflectors on your bike. But many states require a clear front reflector, a red rear reflector, amber pedal reflectors, and clear side reflectors. If you don’t equip your bike as the law requires, and you’re involved in a collision, you are the one who will likely be blamed. That might seem an unlikely outcome to you, but there isn’t a cyclist out there who went for a ride planning to get hit. That unintentional nature of most collisions is why they’re called “accidents.”

Of course, as almost any experienced cyclist will tell you, a reflector by itself is not sufficient lighting. You need something much brighter, and much more conspicuous, to let drivers know you’re there so they can avoid hitting you. When it comes to active lighting, the brighter, the better: the more noticeable the lights, the sooner an approaching motorist will react to your presence on the road. A good set of lights will also help you avoid potholes, gravel, and other road hazards.

So what’s required for active lighting? Generally, you are only required to have a white front light. You are generally not required to have a rear light, but many cyclists prefer to add one. Some rear lights even combine a light and a reflector into one removable unit, so you don’t have to ride with a separate light and reflector. If you do run a rear light, the law requires it to be red. Often cyclists get the law backwards and ride with a rear light, but no front light. If you do that, you can be ticketed, and if you are involved in a collision, it is likely that you are the one who will be blamed.

For your own safety, make sure that you meet the minimum requirement for passive and active lighting in your state. But if you really want to protect yourself, remember that the law only establishes the minimum lighting equipment required. To increase your likelihood of being seen in the dark—and reduce your risk of being involved in a collision—you should seriously consider going beyond the minimum that the law requires.

Research and assistance by Rick Bernardi, J.D.

Connect with Bob on Facebook!

 

This article, Bike Lights: When Do You Need Them?, was originally published on Bicycling on January 9, 2012.

Now read the fine print:
Bob Mionske is a former competitive cyclist who represented the U.S. at the 1988 Olympic games (where he finished fourth in the road race), the 1992 Olympics, as well as winning the 1990 national championship road race.
After retiring from racing in 1993, he coached the Saturn Professional Cycling team for one year before heading off to law school. Mionske’s practice is now split between personal-injury work, representing professional athletes as an agent and other legal issues facing endurance athletes (traffic violations, contract, criminal charges, intellectual property, etc).
Mionske is also the author of Bicycling and the Law, designed to be the primary resource for cyclists to consult when faced with a legal question. It provides readers with the knowledge to avoid many legal problems in the first place, and informs them of their rights, their responsibilities, and what steps they can take if they do encounter a legal problem.
If you have a cycling-related legal question, please send it to mionskelaw@hotmail.com Bob will answer as many of these questions privately as he can. He will also select a few questions each week to answer in this column. General bicycle-accident advice can be found at bicyclelaw.com.
Important notice:
The information provided in the “Road Rights” column is not legal advice. The information provided on this public web site is provided solely for the general interest of the visitors to this web site. The information contained in the column applies to general principles of American jurisprudence and may not reflect current legal developments or statutory changes in the various jurisdictions and therefore should not be relied upon or interpreted as legal advice. Understand that reading the information contained in this column does not mean you have established an attorney-client relationship with attorney Bob Mionske. Readers of this column should not act upon any information contained in the web site without first seeking the advice of legal counsel.