Bike Lights Guide

Bike lights can make you visible while out biking and being visible while on a ride can save your life. Though your jersey and your bike may have reflective accents, it’s not enough on the road with cars, pedestrians and other distractions that could result in danger or a collision.

Bike lights Types of Bike lights Best Bike lights for you

Bike Lights

Bike lights are the easiest way to be more visible while biking, the misconception is a light helps you see, but they’re designed to help you be seen. In Ontario and many other provinces the Cycling and The Highway Traffic Act states;

“a bike must have a white front light and a red rear light or reflector if you ride between 1/2 hour before sunset and 1/2 hour after sunrise.”

So you want to be safe and you want to follow the law, where do you start? What light should you get? This guide will help you understand different kinds of lights, their functions and which work best in certain situations.

Bikes lights are most often a small LED bulb in a plastic casing that has a rubber attachment to the bike. Bike lights have traditionally used clock batteries for power but rechargeable USB lights have become the industry standard saving users a ton in battery replacement. Bike lights are coloured either white for the front light, or red for the rear light and have an “on” setting as well as an alternating “on-off” for added visibility. They range in brightness measured in lumens, the amount of light emitted by an object and how far that light can travel, the higher the lumens the farther away the light can be seen.

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Types of bike lights

Bikes lights come in a variety of sets, with different functions and power, let’s go through some examples and maybe something will standout to you.

Single Bike lights

Bikes lights can be purchased in singles and for a variety of reasons this may be beneficial to some. You can purchase a single front or rear light, or you go with an option that can function as either.

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Bike light set

Your Best bet is to get a pair of bike Lights, one for front and rear. A front white light have higher lumens than the rear for a number of reasons but simply red light travels farther than white light. Here’s a range of bike light sets with different lumens and settings.

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High Visibility Bike lights

High Visibility lights are very useful for being visible on your bike. The more lumens the further away that light can be seen and these lights are specially design to do exactly that.

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