Upright bikes are safer at night :-)

[Gregory_carroll]

I normally ride a low racer on my regular commute to and from work. Occasionally, when it's dark I fail to see bumps in the road and give myself a bit of a scare. I have pretty good lights, but looking through your feet, cranks and cables at 40kph on a wet bumpy bike path at night is a bit of an extreme sport. So after 5 years of riding almost exclusively on recumbents (and many more years before that on a mountain bike), I decided in the name of better visibility and thus safety to get an "upright" road bike.

A Cannondale R2000 with some fairly nice shiney bits off ebay. Its light and the previous owner had put a very nice set of integrated carbon bars on it, in fact once I got over the sore butt and the extra effort required to get from a - b it has become a trusted mate.

After 4 weeks of aclimatising my muscles I was starting to get some good speed, and quite enjoying not standing out like the proverbial balls on a dog when, on my way home, down the usual bike path I hit a bump that I hadn't seen (the irony is not lost on me lost control of the bike, careered off the path hit a tree, gave myself a bit of a knock on the head, buckled the wheel, snapped the handlebars ($600.00 dollars to replace apparently) cut myself up a bit and critically injured my pride......gutted.

I have had it fixed and am going to ride it to work tomorrow - get back on the horse and all that I am not sure that my safety assessment was so brilliant.

Good luck out there everyone Its not always the drivers you need to watch out for!!

[}SkOrPn--7]

Good read and sorry for your incident just glad your ok but what had me chuckling was this was done for safety reasons. I must admit since I have been bent I haven't come across this issue as I find spotting things on the deck hasn't changed from a DF bike.

[bradwoodbr]

Bad luck on having the crash on a DF. I hope you and your pride heal quickly and it wasn't Karma (or should that be bikema?) for reverting back.
I experienced the same poor night vision on my lowracer until I purchased and installed a set of Ayup intermediates - brilliant!
The lights are on a bracket on the front derailleur post, just over the centre of the BB.
Now I can see the bumps better at night than the daytime.
Cheers

[hartleymartin]

A headlight mounted low on the front fork will let you see bumps better at night. Low light + bump = long shadow.

[william]

+1 for the AY-UP's. Little size, low weight, good battery life, however, they don't make trees jump out of the way when you're out of control.
Good story though. If you've been riding with J.P. with his lights on you'll know the difference. Anyway, different horses for courses and good to see you're ok (aren't you?).

william