What's the law?
When you ride your bicycle at night or in low-visibility conditions, such as fog or heavy rain, the Australian Road Rules (which form the basis of state and territory road rules) requires that you have lights. These include:
- A white light at the front.
- A red light at rear.
- A rear red reflector
The lights can be steady or flashing, and must be visible for at least 200 metres. Ideally, they should also be visible 50 metres from the side. The red rear reflector should be visible from 50 meters from the rear when light is projected onto it by a vehicle's headlight at low beam. Good head-on and angled visbility is essential - but durability, size, ease of fitting and removing, and battery replacement is also important to consider when buying a bike light.
Bicycle Victoria
Bicycle Victoria takes the issue of visibility seriously and each year gathers a panel of industry experts, including CHOICE, to assess a range of bike lights. The panel gathers in an inner-city Melbourne laneway after sunset and assesses each light in line with the Australian Road Rules.
Ride On, the Bicycle Victoria magazine, recently put the newest batch of lights to the test, a combination of front and rear compact lights and high-powered LED's were tested. See the full report report in their April/May issue.
Find out more about bikes and bike accessories.
Brands and models tested
Compact front lights
- BBB High Integrate
- BBB Spark #
- Blackburn Flea 2.0 USB #
- Blackburn Voyager bracket-less
- Cateye Hybrid
- Exposure Lights Flash bracket-less
- Illumenox Highpower SS-L1222W
- Illumenox Vega 1W #
- Knog Blinder #
- Knog Boomer USB #
- Knog Gekko Bracket-less
- Moon Mask #
- Planet Bike Beamer 5 #
- Planet Bike Blaze 2W
- Portland Design Works Dreadnought #
- Portland Design Works Spaceship
- Serfas Raider USL-5 #
- Smart 1W
- Tioga ET #
- X-tech #
Compact rear lights
- BBB BLS-Highlaser bracket-less
- BBB Spark #
- Cateye Rapid 5 #
- Cygo-Lite Hotshot USB #
- Exposure Lights Flare bracket-less
- Fibre Flare Long Red bracket-less
- Illumenox Crocolight
- Infini Amuse Rear bracket-less
- Knog Beetle bracket-less
- Knog Blinder #
- Knog Boomer USB #
- Moon Gem 3.0 #
- Moon Shield #
- Nite Rider Cherry Bomb 1W #
- Niteflux Red Zone 4 bracket-less
- Planet Bike Blinky Superflash
- Portland Design Works Radbot 1000 #
- Reelight SL620 power back up
- Serfas Raider rear USL-5R #
- Serfas TL-ST Seat Stay Taillight #
- Skully 1W Rear bracket-less
- Smart Two Eyes
- S-Sun Eaglefly
- Tioga Dual Eyes
- Tioga ET #
Dynamo front lights
- Busch and Muller IQ-Cyo
- Busch and Muller IQ-Fly
- Busch and Muller Oval Senso Plus
- Gazelle Mendeo Plus Fenderlight
- Reelight SL620 power back up
- Schmidt Edelux
- Supernova E3 Por Glare-free
Dynamo rear lights
- Busch and Muller Seculite Plus
- Busch and Muller D-Toplight XS plus
- Supernova E3 tail seat-post mount
High-powered front lights
- Ay-Up V Twin Sport #
- BBB Highpower
- Cygo-Lite Expilion 350 #
- Cygo-Lite Expolion 170 #
- Exposure Lights Diablo cable-free
- Exposure Lights Joystick cable-free
- Literover Supernova #
- Literover Trail Blazer
- Moon Power 500 #
- NiteRider Mi.Newt Pro 750 #
- Serfas TL500 #
High-powered rear lights
- Ay-Up Twin Sport with red caps
- Literover Tail Gator
# Newly tested models.
How we test
The annual bike lights test brings together a panel of industry experts from the cycling community to act as judges. The lights are assessed at night on a suburban road with a popular cycle path, at a distance of 200m, and also at 50m with the lights angled at 45° (to simulate the bike approaching an intersection). The flash rate, where applicable, was also assessed.
Durability, size, ease of fitting and removing, waterproofness and battery replacement should also be considered when buying a light. So Bicycle Victoria teams up with RMIT industrial design students who assess these categories and give a rating out of 10 for each light.
Visibility ratings (out of 100) and industrial design ratings (out of 10) are combined to determine the overall score. Visibility is given the highest weighting (60%).
What's new?
This year a couple of extra tests were included. Ride On joined forces with RMIT to use their lux meter, a device that measures brightness. Conducted in a controlled environment, each light was measured from 10m, following the stringent German StVZO standard for bicycle lighting.
Interestingly, the panel’s judgement of the most visible lights didn’t gel with the lux meter results. According to the lux meter, the brightest front compact light was rated eighth by the panel out of the 11 front lights. The most visible light according to the judges was 5.8 lux. People take into account a range of environmental factors when determining brightness, which may account for these differences.
Ride On has found that people are interested in how easily lights can turn on accidentally, so RMIT was asked to include this when assessing their design and construction. The rating for this was incorporated into the useability score.
There were three significant casualties during the durability test, which drops the lights from handlebar height. The Moon Gem 3.0 broke apart, the housing of the central LED of the Serfas TL-ST Seat Stay Taillight broke and the connection between the light and battery became loose on the Ilumenox Vega.