Girding For Battle – Bicycle Safety Equipment
Question: What is the most important piece of cycling safety equipment? Lights? Helmet? Horn? The answer, if you happen to be riding while you’re reading this article, is underneath you. Nothing is more crucial for living to tell the tale than a well maintained bike.
It doesn’t take much to put you in danger- a dangling fender, wobbly handlebars or the most common problem - faulty brakes. The last time a deer jumped out in front of me as I barreled down Quadra’s Telephone Hill in the dark, I was more than happy that I had just replaced my brake pads. Conversely, the only time I went over my handlebars was when two large snarling dogs came charging at me. “Don’t worry – they’re really very friendly” yelled the owner. Not reassured I hit the brakes only to find that the back ones weren’t working. The good news was that I wasn’t going fast and landed on my butt in the middle of a dirt road. Plus the dogs, figuring I was some kind of martial arts ringer, turned tail and ran for home. Only my pride was hurt.
The second key piece of safety equipment is actually many pieces. It includes anything and everything that makes you visible to pedestrians, other cyclists and especially motorists. This includes front and back lights, reflectors on spokes and reflector tape on the bike frame. Cycling jackets and pants with reflective stripes are great but an excellent and cheap alternative is a reflective vest of the kind that road maintenance or ferry workers wear. In fact anything you can add to light up your frame, pedals, wheels or body helps. As Richard Ballantine one of the Gurus of cycling declared “Light yourself up like a Christmas Tree.” It may not make you the height of fashion, but drivers will notice you.
Speaking of lights, in an earlier column I advocated simple low weight and maintenance LED lights with rechargeable Enloop batteries. And I stand by that recommendation. But while they make the cyclist visible, they don’t illuminate the road as well as the more expensive and cumbersome halogen lights, especially in fog or rain. So if you are cycling in poorly lit or rural areas, you may need to experiment to find the light system that works best for you.
Some pieces of safety equipment may or may not be useful. I don’t regularly carry dog spray, but when I take certain routes that I know have vicious dogs, it gives me courage. Cycling gloves are also useful if you take a small spill. The leather palms will help protect your hands. Some people swear by mirrors but they always seem like one more thing to snap off the handlebars as I try to squeeze my bike into a suitable parking spot on the ferry. Horns? I find a loud but friendly yell works just as well – although if I regularly rode the seawall I might well get a horn or bell. But there is one very valuable piece of safety gear that we haven’t yet talked about: your helmet.
Google “bicycle helmets” and you will come up with a dazzling array of sites, a few of which would have you believe that helmets do not make any appreciable difference in terms of cyclist injury. Statistics say otherwise. Of bicycling injuries that result in death, it is estimated that over fifty percent could be prevented if the cyclist wore a helmet. Even more convincing, most emergency room doctors believe helmets should always be worn. Who are you going to trust? I’ll go with the doctors.
Helmets are relatively cheap and interestingly enough, the more expensive models are not necessarily better. It turns out that the more knobs and ridges a helmet has on it, the more likely it is to snag when it hits the pavement which is not good. That snag could snap your neck. One web site which is excellent for evaluating helmets can be found by googling Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute. It rates almost every helmet being manufactured today in terms of level of protection, durability and cost. So before buying, take a little time and do your research.
One final issue to note about helmets, is that they have to sit snug on your noggin. It doesn’t do you much good if, when you actually need your helmet, it doesn’t stay on. The old models were frustrating. You virtually needed an engineering degree and a good half hour to adjust your helmet properly. But with the twirling gizmos on today’s helmets, adjustment is dead easy.
Even so, during the cool months, you may wear some type of headgear underneath your helmet in the morning and then have to take it off in the afternoon. Adjusting your helmet twice a day is a pain. But here is a piece of advice that I try to follow religiously. Take the extra minute to make the adjustment and ensure your helmet fits.
It just might save your life.
