Make sure you are well prepared for cycling at night, especially as the long and light Summer nights turn into dark Autumn and Winter ones. No matter what your reason for riding at night, go well equipped.

It doesn’t have to be work that causes this. Maybe you just enjoy riding at night. If it is your intention to ride on the roads in the dark, then you need to make sure you are well equipped.

What equipment am I talking about? I am talking about appropriate lights. Lots of coutries have made it the law to be well lit at night. But, even leaving the legislation aside, you need to do the right thing from a health and safety point of view.

There are two main reasons for adding a light to the front of your bike and one of the reasons may make your choice more difficult.

The first is that you need to be seen by pedestrians and other traffic using the road. In order to take any necessary avoiding action, they need to be able to see you coming in the first place.

The second reason, and possibly the more difficult thing to achieve is that you need to be able to see where you are going.

Producing light of sufficient power on the front of you bike, has until recently, meant having fairly hefty light units powered by batteries that needed to be fairly hefty themselves if they were to last more than a few minutes at a time.

There is another way of course, and that is to use lights powered by a dynamo which is driven by your wheels. This is fine and removes the need to continuously invest in new batteries but it makes it feel like you are riding through treacle due to the resistance the dynamo causes.

There is an alternative to both these solutions now though. New technology has meant that the LED light units of the past which were dim and pretty much useless for seeing where you were going have been replaced with much more capable LEDs which will illuminate your path quite effectively.

Some manufacturers such as Cateye and Exposure are now offering single LED lights rated in excess of 1500 candle power.

So, if you are in the market for new lights, don’t discount out of hand the new generation of LED lights as they offer far more than they used to.