Carrboro hosts Friday Night Lights event for bike safety

As the nights grow longer post-daylight saving time, cyclists and pedestrians will be even more at risk for accidents — so, Carrboro street safety advocates are working to light the night.

The Carrboro Recreation & Parks Department, Go Chapel Hill and the Carrboro Bicycle Coalition collaborated to put together Friday Night Lights on Nov. 7, an event where cyclists and pedestrians could collect free lights for nighttime visibility and join in on a walk and bike ride.

The event also featured a contest for the best-lit cyclists and pedestrians, the best use of reflective material by a cyclist or pedestrian and the best tips for commuting cyclists.

“We’re tired of seeing people out there who are not visible,” said Heidi Perry, an event organizer and member of the Carrboro Bicycle Coalition.

“The two recent fatalities involving bikes — those both happened during the day. It becomes even worse at night.”

The CBC has done bike light giveaways in the past, but she said this was the first time the organization had planned an event with contests and a group bike ride.

Bess Pridgen and Olivia Fricks, students at McDougle Middle School who attended Friday Night Lights, said they bike to school and to each other’s houses on a regular basis.

“Sometimes I’ll bike over to her house, and it’ll be really dark. It’s really scary to bike home without lights, because I don’t want to get hit,” Fricks said.

Molly DeMarco, a Chapel Hill resident and volunteer judge for the contests, said she keeps an eye out for cyclists commuting from work without bike lights at night.

“Every time I see someone riding in the dark on (N.C. 54), I want to stop and give them a light,” she said.

Perry said the event’s nighttime bike ride was tailored to demonstrate the usefulness of bike lights to the riders.

“On the way back, we went down some dark, small neighborhood streets so they could see how much the lights help them as much as they help the cars,” she said.

“The ride was great — that may have been the highlight of the night. The kids were having a blast. They were waving to everybody on Franklin Street, and everybody was very well-lit, so everybody could see us coming.”

The Carrboro Board of Aldermen and Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle were invited as guests to judge the event’s contests.

“It’s the perfect time of year for this event because the time just changed — it’s going to be darker out for longer and people need to be safe,” said alderman Damon Seils.

Winners of the contest for most visible cyclist were John Rees, who donned full-body Christmas lights, and Steve Wismann, who wired a laptop battery to LED light strips to create a moving light show on the body of his bike.

Perry said collaboration was a vital component of organizing the event, with the Carrboro Police Department sending two officers along on the event’s bike ride, Go Chapel Hill providing extra volunteers and Carrboro government officials coming out to show their support.

“We’re very fortunate to have a very willing town,” she said. “It takes a village.”

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