Just recently I was quite forcibly reminded of the importance and value of owning efficient cycle lights. The lesson, if it can be called that, was learnt from a driver’s perspective, which of course was myself, thus making it all the more pertinent.

Being late for an appointment is no excuse for driving too quickly, but who hasn’t travelled at the speed limit down an unlit country road in pitch darkness and not trusted the relationship between your reactions and the scope of the vehicle’s headlights?

Admittedly, this scenario is a cyclist’s nightmare; if you’re on a bike in the dark, hearing and sensing a fast-approaching car can have you bracing yourself for the worst. Well, it didn’t happen – the worst, that is, or anything like it. Both of us, me and a cyclist out in the lanes, to the best of my knowledge arrived at our destinations safely and in one piece, which in the case of my van is an achievement in itself.

Now, the main reason for this happy conclusion, and the point of this piece, was the truly amazing intensity of the rider’s lamps and, in particular, the  back light. Now, anyone with nocturnal tendencies will know that cloud cover and the cycle of the moon can vary one’s scope of vision from something not far short of daylight to the proverbial ‘can’t see your hand in front of your face’.

The reason I mention these variations of darkness is that some lights show up very well only when the night is as black as your hat, then fade to a candle in the dreaded half-light of dusk. These lights, on the other hand, were so evident, partly due to being in flashing mode, that at first I mistook them for some kind of roadwork or obstruction in the road up ahead and immediately slowed.

After perhaps 100 metres or so, I still hadn’t encountered anything and, as the road bent or dipped and the light came and went, finally the source was identifiable as someone out on their MTB. I drove past what can only be described as a mobile rave without the music, my van’s interior ‘strobing’ from red to white.

To have looked directly in my mirror would have been as foolish as to watch a welder with the naked eye. I had to fight the urge to pull over and enquire as to the make of these life-savers, but that in itself – being overtaken by some geezer in a dodgy-looking van who then pulls in up the road, alights and starts flagging you down – is another cyclist’s nightmare. Heavens, my reputation in this part of the world is bad enough already.