The essential bike safety gear for your next ride

Although cycling is generally a safe activity, you should still take precautions before going out on your bike. And that goes beyond simply wearing a helmet. Here’s a breakdown of the essential bike safety gear you need for your next ride.

Helmet

Let’s start with the most obvious and essential piece of safety gear: a bike helmet. The reason you need one is quite simple—it protects your head from bumps and crashes.

What’s not simple, however, is knowing which type of helmet to go for. You don’t want one poorly suited for your kind of riding, nor do you want one that skimps on quality and protection to keep the price down.

When shopping for a bike helmet, first identify the type of cycling you plan to do. There are road cycling helmets, mountain bike helmets, and full-face helmets. Full-face helmets are only necessary for more extreme forms of biking like downhill, dirt jumping and freeride mountain biking. Typically, a mountain bike helmet will cover you for most types of riding on roads, trails, or light off-road.

The next thing to look for is the British Standards Institution or European Standards logo in the product description or packaging. The standards code to look out for is BS EN 1078.

This guarantees that the helmet has met and passed the testing in construction, materials, field of vision, shock absorption, and fastening laid out by the European Union’s General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR). Our article on bicycle helmet safety standards goes into more detail on what to look for in a safe helmet.

While it might not look like it, a lot of technical innovation goes into constructing a helmet. For this reason, if you damage your helmet, you should replace it before your next ride, as the structure may be compromised and fail to protect you.

Gloves

After a helmet, the next most common piece of bike safety gear a cyclist is likely to own is gloves. Gloves are a good idea for several reasons.

Firstly, if you fall off your bike, you’ll probably reach out to break your fall with your hands. In this instance, gloves protect the skin on your palms as you connect with the ground.

Some bike gloves are also padded, cushioning the blow of a fall while giving you a more comfortable grip of the handlebars. As an added bonus, they’ll keep your hands warm in winter, which means they’ll retain responsiveness for emergency braking.

Bike gloves generally come in two forms: fingerless or with full coverage. Fingerless gloves afford some dexterity and ventilation while still protecting your palms, but offer less insulation in the colder seasons.

Depending on the type of riding you intend to do, some bike gloves may be made with thicker and tougher materials or have armour plates. 

Reflectors and lights

One of the most common causes of cycling accidents is a motorist failing to see a cyclist while turning or changing lanes. For this reason, reflectors and lights that make you as visible as possible are paramount.

There are plenty of options out there – from reflectors for nearly every component there is on a bike to high-vis wearables of all kinds. Let’s not forget actual powered lights either. Whichever option you pick, you should never be without some form of light-reflective material on each side of your body and your bike when you go for a ride.

For night riding, we recommend handlebar and seat reflectors, which typically come as standard with most bikes. Of course, visibility is a two-way street – you want to be able to see and be seen. For this reason, you should ride at night with only the aforementioned reflectors and a headlight and rear light.

Other things to bear in mind when shopping for a bike headlight are to make sure the battery life lasts longer than your intended ride, that it’s weatherproof, and that it’s just the right brightness for your intended use. As a guide, Evans Cycles recommends rear road lights of 50-100 lumens, front road lights ranging from 200-500 lumens, and front off-road lights of 500-1500 lumens.

Protective glasses

If you’ve ever ridden down a country lane, you’ll know better than most how often insects love to fly right into your mouth or eyes as you zip by.

Similarly, dust, stones and debris kick up when riding on gravel toe-paths or main roads. That’s why you’ll often see cyclists riding in wrap-around sunglasses.

Any stray bug or piece of dirt is enough to impede your vision, cause discomfort and distract you, which is dangerous and could cause a crash. So, we recommend wearing cycling glasses.

Another safety benefit of cycling glasses is that they prevent glare from the sun or car high beams if you choose ones with tinted and polarised lenses. Moreover, they’ll shield your eyes from wind and rain so you can retain visibility in bad weather.

Mirrors

Though you don’t tend to see mirrors very often on push bikes, they do exist – and they’re quite a useful piece of bike safety gear.

Most road cycling hazards involve motorists, so if you’re riding home at rush hour, it helps to see the traffic approaching from behind you. Cycling mirrors provide this benefit.

Mirrors come in various forms—some clip to your helmet or are worn as eyewear, others attach to your handlebars, and a few even clip to the back of your gloves or wrist. Each offers different benefits.

A helmet or eyewear mirror moves with your head, allowing you to see the full 180-degrees behind you, as opposed to a handlebar mirror, which only gives you visibility directly behind your bike.

Handlebar mirrors tend to have a larger reflective surface than helmet, eyewear, or glove mirrors. They’re also less distracting and more durable.

Specialist cycling insurance through Cycleplan

Whatever type of safety gear you decide is best for you, it's impossible to mitigate all of the risks associated with cycling. That’s why you may also want to consider protecting yourself with specialist cycling insurance.

With specialist cycling insurance through Cycleplan, you’re covered for theft, loss, and accidental damage up to £30,000. Policies can also be tailored to include Personal Accident and Public Liability cover to protect you if deemed liable for injury to someone else or damage to property while out on your bike.

Learn more about specialist cycling insurance and get an online quote today.