You can't catch them if you can't see them!

Along with the change to 'wintertime' two weeks ago (one week ahead of the USA), comes the darkness. Being at 52 degrees N latitude, you see much less of the sun during the winter time. The shortest day of the year in December, brings only 7 hours and 43 minutes of daylight. In comparison to Chicago, IL ( at 41.5N latitude), you see 9 hours and 7 minutes of daylight. Here are some interesting graphs I found with this sort of information about Utrecht. The timing information I found on www.timeanddate.com . Currently, my day is getting shorter by over 3 minutes each day! Amazing!

Well, I'm faced with this sad reality of 3 minutes less daylight every day, when I ride my bike to and from the train station in the morning and night. Especially in the evening, as I walk to my bike, past the junkies shooting up heroin in wide open plain view, and dodging the the other bikers racing by going home. You must have lights on your bike in order to be seen by everyone else, not only cars and buses, but other bikers too! And I mean working , functioning lights.

I'd say about 90% of the bikes here are old pieces of junk. The lights are no longer working, having seen their better days maybe 15 years ago. So, people must buy their lights, battery powered clip on lights, available at all bike stores, at the market, and at Hema (dept store). But, a large portion of people still do not do this!! Its dangerous for them AND for me!

Recently, in the past week, the police made it widely known that they would start ticketing bikers with lights clipped to their clothes or bags. Before, you'd get a fine if you didn't have lights at all (for example, me in 2004!). Now, if they aren't attached to your bike, you will get fined, even if you have lights on. But since this 'threat' from the politie, I have not noticed a change at all in how people wear their lights. I still see them attached to their messenger bags or front of their jackets. I also haven't seen the police out at check points trying to catch people. So what incentive is there to attach the lights to your bike?

I personally agree that it is safer to have the lights on the bike, and not just on the person/bag. You can't see lights as well when they're attached to a coat- as the person moves, the light moves and you can't see them very well at all. So , it is a hassle that you have to go dig up that old screwdriver to attach the lights to your bike...but I think some dutchies would rather be caught several times and pay the 20euro fine, before they actually do it. I think I read that some guy was already caught 3 times with lights on his bag, yet he still won't attach the lights to his bike. But after reading this article that the politie are giving less priority in giving fines...you get a mixed message, and even less compliance.

I guess the politie must accept that there are just too many bikers out there to catch and fine. Also, when you don't have lights on ...you're harder to catch! They can't see you!