How to give away lights to cyclists without lights?
We have had much more success advertising it and doing it through a local bike shop or bike group. Once each, so far, that I've done.

I think the psychology behind refusing a gift from a stranger is much as Criggie says. You're some random dude approaching people at night offering second hand lights of unknown provenance. Why are you doing that? What's going on? Especially because you're also criticising them "you, the idiot without lights, stop and let me tell you how to do it properly". Yeah, nah.

FWIW, I have your same issue with chain lube. Occasionally I'll ride up behind someone whose bike is in mortal agony and say "I have chain lube in my pannier, wanna stop and let me fix that noise for you" and hardly anyone will accept.



The first time I was involved in a lighting give-away was when the Critical Mass fund I kept had more than a thousand dollar surplus and I decided I should do something with it. Critical Mass is an anarchy, so it really was my decision. While chatting with the owner of a bike shop at Mass we came up with the idea of buying a bunch of cheap-but-reasonable lights and giving them away. We talked to the local cycling promotion bureacrazy and they agreed that given 6-12 months to get themselves organised they could help promote it. We declined. I handed over the cash (my $1000, about $500 from the shop for lights that wholesaled at ~$5/pair when bought by the boxful), the shop ordered some of boxes of lights, I printed up a few posters and we put them up in the shop and along the bike route we were targeting. Then one winter night we set up a stall on the footpath next to the bike route, got 3-4 people to man it, and gave away about 300 sets of lights over 3 nights. We explicitly didn't stop people getting more than one set, but we did refuse a couple of people who were obviously going "free stuff, give me everything".

That was very popular, and was sufficiently effective at promoting the bike shop that the owner went "I can spend $500 on a 1/4 page ad in bike magazine, or $500 on free lights... the lights work much better". Even people who didn't need or want the free lights thought better of the shop for the give-away.

So a couple of years later the shop owner did a deal with the cycling promotion unit in the local council or state government or somewhere (I wasn't involved with that bit). The promotion people advertised it and put in half the light fund, the shop ditto, and we/they gave away another few hundred lights (I helped with this bit). The location was picked to suit the promotion people, but it was busy and also the site of a new cycle route. Again, very popular and effective.

The difference is that we had an official-looking banner and multiple people, plus the signage/people were known entities. People will take a free gift from a local businessman, or "that guy from Critical Mass" who they see regularly, much more willingly that someone they've never seen before. It's about attributing motivation. "it's a bike shop promotion" or "that guy is nuts about bike community" is easy and people will just run with it. Having to think about why you're trying to press lights on them is hard.