6 Safety Tips For Cyclists
Cycling is one of the greenest ways to get around, but it can also be incredibly dangerous. Fortunately, there are many precautions you can take to keep yourself safe and avoid an accident. These six safety tips for cyclists are a great place to start.
1 . Bike Maintenance
To stay safe on the road, it’s important to ensure that you correctly maintain your bike. You should aim to perform each of these checks regularly:
*Check tires: You should check your tires before each ride, ensuring that the tire wall has the correct PSI. Consider the weather conditions; for example, you can use a decreased tire pressure on a rainy day. Doing so will improve your grip.
*Lube the chain: It’s important to lube your chain to get rid of debris and dirt; lubing at least once a week will keep your chain in good condition.
*Test bolts: You should aim to check the tightness of your bolts at least once a month. Check your crankset bolts, headset, stem bolts and bottle cages.
*Loose spokes: While you’re checking the bolts, you should also take a look at the wheel spoke, ensure that there are no loose parts here.
2. Head & Tail Lights
To stay safe on your bike, it’s important to use both headlights and tail lights. Your lights will help you to be seen, and to see in the dark. Over the last few years, daytime running lights have become increasingly popular for bikes. According to Road C.C, ‘When you consider that 80% of cycling accidents happen during the day, attracting attention to other road users as early as possible during these times is really quite crucial.’
3. The Right Clothing
Road Safety GB recently reported that ‘cyclists are more than 50% less likely to be involved in a collision with a motor vehicle when wearing high-visibility clothing.’ With stats like these, it’s easy to see why high-visibility clothing is a great way to stay safe. Before you start cycling, ensure that you shop for all the protective gear you need, including your helmet, footwear and gloves if appropriate.
4. Plan Your Route
Planning your route beforehand will help you to stay focused and eliminate distractions while you ride. The following apps can help you to plan your routes:
*Bike Hub Journey Planner: Cyclists looking to plan their routes will just love this application. You can choose between several different routes, including quiet routes, busy routes, the quickest routes, and favourite tracks. As well as this, you can get info about cycling laws, local bike shops and cycle to work schemes. The app uses an audio voice guide to provide directions.
*Komoot: With the Komoot app, you can plan your road hiking or hiking routes with ease. The app provides a guide for every track and route, whether you’re online or offline. Komoot lets you plan your route according to elevation, distance, and surface. With the voice navigation system, there’s no need to take your eyes off the trail or become distracted.
5. Know the risks
It’s useful to know about the common bicycle accidents and how you can avoid these. To help you stay safe, let’s take a closer look at some of the risks:
*Corners: Plenty of road accidents happen when riding around corners. When you are approaching a corner, you should look directly through the turn that you are about to make; it can be helpful to find a focus point. On wet roads, you should avoid braking until you are actually in the corner. As you are approaching, you can feather the brakes and lean your bike slightly inwards.
*Hazards in the road: Hazards can come in different forms when you are cycling, whether it’s potholes, litter, or weather conditions. If you are in a situation when you need to brake quickly, ensure that you don’t use your front brakes too hard. Try to ‘squeeze’ the brakes while moving your weight down over the rear wheel.
It’s important to remain alert at all times when you are riding; it can be difficult to anticipate the actions of other riders and drivers around you.
Extra support
No matter how careful a rider you are, accidents can occur that were not your fault. If you do become injured as a result of a biking accident you’ll need to call upon the services of a personal injury lawyer. For an excellent service, take a look at Thomas Law Offices.
