State law in most places requires that you have a white headlight in the front and a red tail light in the back -- both visible for at least 500 feet -- if you're going to be out riding during hours of darkness... which is usually defined as between half an hour after sunset to half an hour before sunrise. Some states will let you get away with only a red reflector in back, but it's best to run active lights. Lights have two purposes -- to help motorists and other road users see you, and to let you see where you're going. My experience is that if you take care of the latter, the former will take care of itself.

One headlight that I really like is the Cateye EL-520. This is an LED light that runs on 4 AA batteries (which you can get almost anywhere should they go out on you). It throws a nice wide beam of light that makes it easy to see where you're going. Building on a suggestion from another LCI, I strapped two of these things to my handlebars the week before last, and it was like riding with car headlights, pretty much as much light, and much cheaper than one of the more expensive Light & Motion or Cygo-Lite rigs.

I've run a Gygo-Lite NiteRider II for about two years now, and have been very happy with it. Again, excellent lighting on the trails and roads, and dual beams, one "high" and one "low." The only real drawback is the short life on the (rechargeable) batteries. -- a little over two hours, and about an hour if you run both beams simultaneously.

For tail lights, it's really hard to beat the Planet Bike Superflash.

The secret to safe riding at night is to obey all traffic laws and signals, ride defensively, and light yourself up like a Christmas tree.

Tom