I leave my dynamo lights switched on all the time - it's kind of why I have them. My thinking is it gives you a lot more road presence and makes SMIDSY-prone drivers categorise you as a real vehicle in a way hi-viz doesn't. Most crashes I hear about are from other vehicles turning or pulling our across a cyclists path.
Doing that would mean I would lose the 2.5W per hour of charging capacity for my devices...
What makes drives think you are a real road vehicle is educating them that cyclists are valid road users. You can put all sorts of lights and flashy crap on a cyclist and without education, it's gonna make fuck all difference.
(I'm not a fan of blinding / flashing / strobing bike lights - the whole point is that drivers can see you and judge your speed / direction)
And yet, the science says that flashy lights are more visible. Even legal in some places...
I also leave my car headlights on dipped beam all the time except on bright sunny days outside built up areas. I consider it a basic courtesy to other road users to highlight BFO death machine coming through. Driving a grey car on grey roads in our usually grey weather with no lights seems like it should be the subject of the same "how did you expect anyone to see you?" scorn that cyclists without hi-viz can expect if they're hit.
"How did you expect anyone to see you?"
"With their eyes, like a normal human."
Can't see people clearly, slow the fsck down!
Adding day time running lights will add a barrier to cycling up take. Any gains in direct KSI number reduction will be offset by a couple of orders of magnitude by a reduction in people cycling and the corresponding higher number of deaths from obesity related illnesses. You see this in Australia when they brought in the Helmet requirement. Making it easy and safe for people to cycle should be a priority.
A few years back .nl was unhappy about the number of people riding without lights. So rather than a massive crack down, they looked at the reason. Why are so many not using lights? Because lights get nicked, people forget to take them off when they lock their bike up, then some scrote wanders off with them. So they changed the law. lights can now be attached to the human on the bike rather than the bike. So now you see a student with a backpack on, with one light attached to the back of the pack, and one on their chest. They get off the bike, they turn them off when they get into class... The result? Increase in number of people cycling with lights (from some, to a few...).
Stop making it harder for people to cycle, it doesn't make them safer.
J