Riders,

I got a storm of emails about the lights issue. Let me remind: I stated we only have one report, and it seems it was a warning, not a ticket. The reason I asked for reporting on any further incidents is to see if this is becoming standard practice, not to suggest that it already is.

There is much disagreement about whether or not one should blink or "steady state" on the front lamp. After noticing some blinky front lamps on the way home from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" in the movie theatre last night (awesome film btw), my feeling, as I head out into the darkened dawn for a ride, is that if your lights are super bright (over 300 lumens/rechargeable), or your batteries super fresh, you are probably better off in steady state.

At any rate, I enjoyed all of your colorful comments. It takes one to know one, but we certainly are a wordy bunch of creatures.

Keep the Rubber Side Down,

James

I think you are probably referring to something that happened to me. I was stopped by a county officer as I was riding down 20th street near the I-75 overpass at ~7AM several weeks ago. My 250 lumen Cygolite was in flashing mode, as it was after legal sunrise and not needed to see the road or to meet the legal requirement for a "white front light between sunset and sunrise" as stated in the bicycle section of the vehicle code. I also had my rear red Radbot 1000 light on in its flashing mode, but the officer said nothing about it. The officer had just released a car going the other direction; he walked across the road and stopped me in the bike lane, and told me that my flashing white light was "not legal". Naturally, I was quite surprised and told him so, as I had read nothing in the bike statute indicating that additional lighting, i.e. lighting NOT required for legal night riding, was prohibiting from flashing. I told him that virtually every bike light in production includes such a flashing mode for daytime use to improve our visibility to cars in traffic. He did not cite any specific regulation to me that he was basing his opinion on, but he did say that "only emergency vehicles are allowed to use flashing white lights". He was apparently thinking in terms of the brilliant white LED/Xenon strobe lights used by ambulances or the Xenon roof flashers used on school busses. My Cygolite is bright enough to be seen clearly in early daylight hours when flashing, but there is no way it could be mistaken for 50-100 watt emergency vehicle lighting, or the Xenon strobes used on schoolbusses, nor my bike be mistaken for an "emergency vehicle" during daylight hours. My light runs all day on a 18 x 65mm Li-ion cell the size of my finger in its low power mode, so there simply isn't enough power available to compete with sunlight or 60 watt automobile headlights in its steady output mode; might as well turn it off and hope for the best if it isn't flashing.

Whether the officer was right to stop me or not depends on whether you interpret the BIKE SPECIFIC statutes as overriding the more general statutes referring only to "vehicles" (without ever defining what they mean by "vehicle" in the Definitions section of the motor vehicles statutes). The bike regulations specifically allow "additional lighting either on the bike or the rider" without saying whether these lights have to be STEADY (that word appears in some of the lighting regulations, but not the bike regulations), or what their intensity can or cannot be. To satisfy the officer at the time, I switched the bike light to its steady low output mode and went on my way; no written warning or ticket was issued.

Do the BIKE specific statutes take precedence over the more general statutes, or just supplement them with additional requirements? Clearly, the staffer who wrote them seems to have written them casually thinking something like, "Hey we are only talking about bicycles and puny flashlight sized lights here, some kind of white light on the front and some kind of red thingy on the back and a reflector so the cars can see them from about 600 feet away. If they want to stick a blinky or a headband beam, or some other kind of light on them too, no problem." No Federal or SAE lighting standards are referred to; probably none exist for bicycle lights. The bike regs just say additional lights on the bike or rider are OK and does not restrict them from daytime use; nowhere does it say they must be STEADY or "dim enough that drivers won't be bothered by them"; the whole idea was that drivers WILL notice them and not run over us, I think, otherwise why specifically authorize additional lights at all?

When I got home, I described the event to Bob in an email and asked if there had ever been such an event before and whether the Club had ever sought a clarification about lighting from the Sheriff's office or the Alachua County District Attorney as to whether the county now intended to cite or prosecute anyone using a flashing front white light during legal daylight hours to improve bike visibility for safety purposes. Bob made several attempts to gather further information from a lawyer friendly to the club (who gave two different contradictory opinions from his personal reading of the apparently conflicting regulations, and suggested that a judge might rule either way), but as far as I know, there has been no contact with the Sheriff's Office or the District Attorney at this time. I felt it was best to first see if the Board wanted to contact the DA or Sheriff Darnell on behalf of all the club members rather than contact them directly myself as an individual, so I described the event to Bob, who I think referred it to the Board at their last meeting. I am not sure what actions, if any, may have been taken. Meanwhile, I have resumed using my light in flashing mode during daylight hours when concerned about my visibility on public roads, have been passed by many county police cars on the road, and not yet been stopped again. Is this legal? I still don't know. I do think it is safer, particularly on 2-lane roads with no bike lanes and at any intersection or driveway crossing.

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