Bicycle Bell Tips

A bicycle bell is one of the cheapest and useful pieces of bike gear you can buy. For ten dollars or less you have a small tool within hand's reach that will increase your safety on the road. When biking, making your presence known is of paramount importance-- one reason that bicyclists get into trouble is because other road users around them do not know that they are there. Using equipment like lights, a bell, and reflective gear will definitely help both drivers and pedestrians know where you are.

I had put off getting a bell for a while. I told myself that I could make my presence known by saying "on your left!" when passing another biker. This does work; however for situations where another road user was being, shall we say, irresponsible, it's tough to yell to alert them. If a car is swerving into my lane without signaling, or people are disobeying right of way and in the path of traffic, a shout doesn't have the same reach as a bell. I think it's just the frequency of the sound: a series of bell rings won't get lost in the mass of city noise.

And really, yelling will not only make you hoarse, but for some reason I always get angry when I yell at someone. A yell could be the start of an argument, road rage, and possibly worse. Ringing a bell, even vigorously, has this disconnect that kind of takes the emotional factor out of a possible situation.

I didn't realize quite what I was missing out on until after I set the bell up and tried it out. But since then it's been great! Less yelling and it's just so much easier to let people around me know that I'm close by. Highly recommended. As far as what type of bell to get, most of them are the standard rotate the handle around the bell to ring it. There are also ones where you flick the handle downward and release it to ring, but I like the first version because it's a bit easier to ring multiple times.