> Having two lights in front and two in the rear gives other people very useful anchoring in figuring out how close an object is and how fast it is moving at night.
Up to a point. There's anecdotal evidence of pairs of bike lights being mistaken for more powerful further apart car lights which are further away.
Mounting lights vertically separated, like your suggested addition of a helmet light, avoids that risk.
There's also the "it's just a bike" bike. These days they tend to be hybrids, but they existed before mountain bikes were invented to hybridise with (with 3 speed hub gears or 5 or 10 speed derailleur gears, rather than a modern hybrid's 21 or more).
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/commute/commbike.htm has an overview of commuting bike types.
abi @ 113: It wasn't intended as a comprehensive overview.
A touring bike will generally have a body position aimed at all day comfort rather than the racing bike's optimal aerodynamics, and a wider range of gears, often shared with mountain bikes and hybrids. (Of course by changing or adjusting stems and saddles and seatposts, you can set a given bike up with a range of different body positions. And racing on a track is different from racing a time trial is different from racing a stage race is different from racing a triathlon, and the rules for different events allow or disallow different bike setups, not that I do any of those myself. So "a racing bike" actually covers quite a range of bike types, without even including things that are casually called racing bikes but aren't, or offroad racing.)
A traditional tourer has drop handlebars, hybrids generally have (roughly) flat bars. Drop handlebars are useful if you might be riding into headwinds and want the option of the more aerodynamic position on the drops (even if not as low as a racing bike would have them), or want a greater variety of hand positions.
If you do have drop handlebars, and spend a lot of the time on the tops in a more upright position for better visibility in traffic, it's worth considering auxiliary brake levers like these: http://commutebybike.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/popradbrakes.jpg
(Not to be confused with the old fashioned extension levers designed for the same job. The new design are also known as cyclocross levers. Cyclocross bikes are another type of bike I didn't mention which suit some commutes well. Something like this: http://www.bikemagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/4603 )
UK hybrid history: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hadland/raleigh.htm#_Toc485366719
More criticism of Thompson, Rivara, Thompson here: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2010.pdf
On the bright side, if you believe the figures of Cook and Sheikh, it isn't actually necessary to wear a helmet to benefit from it - they found that helmets prevented 186% of injuries: http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/9/3/266#59
(Or, like Thompson, Rivara, Thompson, the authors are choosing to ignore confounding factors.)
Rikibeth@91 : The better commuting bike depends on your commute. I know someone who commutes 20 miles each way, adding a detour to increase the mileage as part of his training. He uses a racing bike. On the other hand if your commute is "along the pot-holed farm track to the bridleway, then along the gravel towpath by the river", you want something with fatter tyres and stronger wheels.
The best bike for typical commutes will probably sold as a hybrid, a "city" bike, or an "urban" bike. (Marketing terms vary from brand to brand, there aren't exact definitions.)
(Or a folding bike, if you want to be able to take it on a train or bus for part of your commute.)
For most people a proper racing bike will have unnecessarily thin tyres and an excessively bent over body position, no mudguard clearance, and no provision for fitting a pannier rack. But if you want to ride as fast as possible and then change into the clothes you left another day, those are features not problems.
A mountain bike will have knobbly tyres which will be slow and noisy on road, but that's easily changed. A high-end full suspension mountain bike will be expensive, attractive to thieves, and also hard to fit pannier racks to. A cheap suspension bike will waste your energy bobbing about.
A cheap "mountain" style bike will often be unnecessarily heavy because it uses oversize tubing to look like a more expensive bike, but doesn't use the same alloy and thin walled tubing. If it's not so heavy that it puts you off riding it, that needn't be a problem.
John@71: I'm not sure how comparable cycling (at least utility transport cycling) and skiing are. If a commuting cyclist has a 30mph impact, it's generally because a motor vehicle is involved, not because they were doing 30mph on a smooth slippery surface when they fell over.
Related to the Shared Space theory that if you remove barriers and markings then people are more careful, some recent work confirms that cycle lanes can actually encourage drivers to pass closer to cyclists: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6828100.ece (as can wearing a helmet, as far as the limited research on the subject shows: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm).
(And that ignores the sort of extreme stupidity in cycle lane design visible here or here.)
One common counter-argument is "that's just bad cycle lanes, good quality cycle lanes will still help". But in Cambridge, for example, with one of the highest proportion of cyclists in the UK and official "cycling town" status, not a single cycle lane meets the County Council's own recommendation for minimum width, and many are narrower that their standard's supposed absolute minimum width. And even full width lanes can increase conflict at junctions, putting cyclists where motorists aren't looking for them.
(Another depressingly common reaction, at least on one local newsgroup, is "I don't care how ineffective they are, my voters say they want cycle facilities, so we'll squeeze something in somehow".)
Dave Bell@22 - pretty much all helmets are designed to only take a single impact - they work by absorbing energy by crushing irreversibly. What's generally not so obvious from reading the box is that the design speed of that single impact is about 12 mph, and can be reached by falling off a stationary bicycle - the sort of impact the skull has evolved to handle on its own. Absorbing a fraction of the impact can still be helpful at higher speed, but a 30mph impact is more than six times over the design limit (energy varies with square of impact speed). (And, as you say, torsional injuries can even be made worse.)
Building and truing wheels: a good place to start is to read what Sheldon Brown had to say on the subject:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tooltips/truing.html
(As a general rule, a good place to start on any cycling related subject is to see what Sheldon had to say.)
A cheap machine made wheel that you have tightened, trued and stress relieved might not be as good as an expensive handmade wheel, but it is likely to last better than if you hadn't done anything.
abi @23 : I can understand getting a recumbent trike as an answer to difficulty mounting a bike (a relatively upright one like an Anthrotech, not one so low it has its own problems), but I'm surprised a bike would help. But if it works for him....
I did see someone with only one leg riding a Brompton folding bike not long ago. I've no idea how he managed getting started and stopping on it. He had crutches strapped to the rack.
wirelizard @ 26 : leather isn't that solid compared to some saddles - if it's close to the right shape to start with, it will slowly mould itself to exactly the right shape (or so I'm told). But if it doesn't roughly suit you to start with, it might not ever be right.
Lee @ 30 : Yes, I found much the same thing. But when I did have a long enough try on a friend's to get the hang of it, it was great. I still haven't justified buying one myself though (and the friend in question still prefers an upright bike for use in town traffic).
Rikibeth @ 14: Saddles are a very personal choice. Some people love (for example) traditional Brookes leather saddles, others swear they are instruments of torture.
The ultimate answer is to swap the saddle for a comfy seat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle
(But that can have downsides too. The most immediate obvious one is that they are all small production run specialist bikes, and priced accordingly.)
There's a Chinese takeaway that I pass on my way to and from work in Cambridge (UK) that I only recently noticed has a small notice in the window saying they serve halal food. (Normally I cycle past, but that day I was walking.)
A review I am too lazy to Google for explained that zombies should be slow and shambling because they are death. While occasionally one surprises you mostly you can evade them if you aren't careless, but however well you fight they will get you in the end.
> The Pittsburgh Pirates, on the other hand, have been having a lousy year.
http://www.dorktower.com/2008/09/19/dork-tower-682-yarrrrrr/
> on record that McCain's rich trophy wife was violating narcotics laws and stealing drugs
"She has said she hid her addiction from her husband" and "Her husband was forced to admit publicly that he was absent much of the time she was having problems and was not aware of them" (from the Washington Post) isn't a great qualification for a president, but I think "McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover up Cindy's drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife's theft of illegal prescription drugs" (from the Open Left story) adds a new level of low.
> I suspect the reason she clings to that false belief so fervently is because it gives her a reason not to vote for Obama.
She could try the handy its-not-because-hes-black-excuse-wheel
If this (via Jesus' General) is true, it's not clear what he wouldn't stoop to.
From the General: "At first blush, the news that John McCain helped his wife, Cindy, smuggle stolen charity drugs into the country sounds pretty bad. But you have to put it into perspective. Sen. McCain is a maverick who demands things to be done his way."
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
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