Lighting up

One of the essentials to riding a bike or trike safely is good lighting, and that applies even more on narrow, winding country roads with no street lights that are used by tractors with poor lighting of their own. The Other Half and I have used a variety of bike lights with replaceable batteries but none have provided much more light than enables a bike to be seen in good visibility and certainly not in the fog, sleet and rain we get here. That’s not good enough for our present need - nor we can afford to keep replacing the better, but non-rechargeable, 6v batteries that some lights use. After a lot of research, we finally decided to buy Lumicycle’s rechargeable lithium-ion two-light system.

The Lumicycle lights have several obvious advantages for our purposes: they’re small enough to mount on the brackets on either side of the Kangaroo’s passenger compartment (more traditional lights with integral batteries were too large); we can have both a 12w spot for lighting the side of the road with its potholes and rough edges and a 20w flood light to allow us to be seen; they’re made of anodised aluminium with tough plastic mounts; and they put out a huge amount of light. The downside was the considerable cost (at least to us), but on balance we decided that the better lighting, enhanced safety and obvious quality were worth paying for.

The small, 500g Pro 4.4 Amp/hr battery will provide more than enough power for three lights (the two front halogens, plus a rear five-LED lamp) for my 10-15 miles of cycling a day and came with a fast mains charger. It can also be charged from a 12v supply, so when money permits we’ll move to a 12v charging system powered by a small wind turbine or solar panel.

The battery pack fits neatly into one of the storage bags in the passenger compartment, while the cabling passes through slots in the bodywork and is away from the boys’s feet. We did forget to buy a 2m extension cable to connect the rear light up, so we’ll have to order one this week. Other lights we considered included ones from Cateye (cheaper but the lamps were mounted together as one unit), Blackburn (considerably cheaper as we could have bought at a discount from the Cyclists’ Touring Club shop, but user reviews on the web have been very critical), Hope (good but more expensive), Lupine (good but more expensive) and Light & Motion (good but more expensive).

The Kangaroo with its lighting system, reflective clothing and insurance has now cost the same as we received for the Land Rover Discovery it replaced, but the running costs are considerably less while also delivering a large cut in our carbon footprint. We’re happy with that.

And if you find it hard to believe that a set of bicycle lights could be that good, then look at the view over the handlebars with no other light sources on and the flash turned off. The wall of the steading is 16 metres from the lights!