nothin 100 Light-Less Cyclists “Ticketed” | New Haven Independent

100 Light-Less Cyclists Ticketed”

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Hans Schoenburg accepts a new blinking light.

Bike activists flagged down Paul Van Tassel when they caught him cycling home without a light, and offered him one.

You’re not making me safer, Van Tassel replied. You’re marginalizing me.

Telling people they’ll need another piece of gear to ride their bikes just makes biking seem like a fringe activity that only extreme” people take part in, Van Tassel argued. Handing out lights will just discourage people from biking, he said.

Van Tassel offered that appraisal after he was pulled over” Monday night by members of Elm City Cycling. The biking advocates were stationed at two intersections in town to spread the word that Connecticut state law requires people riding bikes to display a lighted lamp upon the forward part of such bicycle.” The law also requires bikes to have front and rear reflectors.

They stopped about 100 riders like Van Tassel.

At the corner of Orange and Humphrey streets in East Rock and Elm and Howe Streets near downtown, members of Elm City Cycling members flagged down passing cyclists and ticketed” them for riding without lights. They handed out cards that explained the law on one side and offered a 20 percent discount off of bike lights at six local bike shops on the other. Clipped to the cards were inexpensive blinking red lights with the Elm City Cycling logo on them.

Those lights were also clipped to ECC board member Rob Rocke (pictured), who was stationed at the northeast corner of Orange and Humphrey wearing a neon green high-visibility coat and a headlamp.

Most people have been pretty receptive,” Rocke said. Only a few people declined to stop, and everyone was friendly, he said.

Elm City Cycling has been thinking about a light handout event for a while, Rocke said. The group decided to do it on Monday since it was the first weekday after the change back to standard time, a day when many people might be bike-commuting for the first time in the dark this fall.

Paul Proulx (at right in photo), an Elm City Cycling member wearing a reflective orange vest and a headlamp, tooted on a train whistle and called out to Van Tassel as he rode by.

Van Tassel, who’s 48, stopped and reluctantly accepted a light and a coupon after a brief disagreement with Proulx over whether the white reflector on the front of his bike was adequate safety protection for biking at night. He also had a red reflector on the back and reflectors on his spokes.

I think I’m pretty safe,” said Van Tassel (at left), who was on his way home from Yale, where he teaches in the engineering department. There’s bigger things to fear.”

He said handing out lights is a good idea, but the trend toward trying to make biking super safe” is counterproductive.

All these things serve to marginalize the biker,” Van Tassel said. The more extreme we make biking, the fewer people are going to do it.”

In the Netherlands, for instance, everyone rides bikes, and no one wears helmets or spandex or special reflective jackets, Van Tassel said. Here in the United State cycling is presented as an activity that requires all kinds of specialized equipment, as something only and extreme person or an extreme athlete would do,” Van Tassel said.

(Click here for a recent New York Times piece arguing Van Tassel’s point.)

On the other hand, Van Tassel said, biking is more dangerous in the United State. Drivers are not as accustomed to sharing the roads with cyclists. So, Van Tassel said, I go halfway.” He wears a helmet and he has reflectors on his bike, the ones that professionals” decided it needed to be sold with. But he otherwise wears normal clothes and doesn’t feel he needs a light.

I’m not flying into space,” he said.

After Van Tassel pedaled away in the dark, Rocke said he suspects that even in bike-friendly Europe, cyclists use lights at night.

Rocke called lights essential for night-riding. He said when he’s driving a car at night, he’s often struck by how invisible cyclists in dark clothes without lights can be.

An un-lit cyclist pedaled by. He didn’t stop when Proulx tried to pull him over, saying that he was in a hurry.

Another European,” Proulx quipped.

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