BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I've seen him but we haven't talked. Yeah, it's like he has two of what Kayla has. I sure wouldn't want to be ahead of him in traffic, but there's no way someone can say "I didn't see you".

Yeah. I am kind of curious to see what they are. I took a look yesterday and they appear to be two flashlights, but I am not sure.

I am currently hypocritical in that my headlight is not obnoxious yet and I need to correct that in short order, but I need to see what to get first.

The area he rides through, from a drivers perspective, has a lot of clutter and makes it hard to see peds and cyclists. The lights he has seem near perfect and can be seen from a half mile away in daylight.

You need to have abright light be bright to be visible.

If you point your light directly towards people's eyes it will be obnoxious.

If you point a blinking light at people's eyes, they won't be able to accurately track your position.

Obnoxious and visible are not the same thing. You don't need to do one to do the other.

When cyclists are hit, I've only ever heard excuses like, "I didn't see him". I have never, ever heard the excuse, "His blinking lights were too distracting."

I tend to have my headlight pointed at the ground about 20 feet ahead. If I had one of those Minewt 250s, I would probably do the same. I mainly need to see where I'm going; I do not "need" to intentionally blind someone, whether in daylight or at night, same as if I was in a car and dim my high beams when a car approaches.

That said, if I had power enough (read: a generator hub), I would run my lights in the daytime, the better to assure my being seen by motorists.

I do not know if this Millvale cyclist with the dual brights has a generator or not, but he puts out enough light even in the daytime that he likely is.

@ kordite

When cyclists are hit, I've only ever heard excuses like, "I didn't see him". I have never, ever heard the excuse, "His blinking lights were too distracting."

True enough.

I'm guessing if you use lights in the day, blinking them wouldn't have a downside.

I have personally stopped cyclists who have blinkiies pointing at my eyes, though. One I wrote about one here: the sun wasn't down and he was leaving orange spots on my eyes as he wove though a pedestrian crowd with insanely bright lights blinking upwards when I was walking to a Flagstaff Hill event.

When Pitt first got bike police they would do the same.

I'm not convinced that safety needs to be obnoxious.

OTOH, I do use my lights for visibility. If I think my batteries are too worn down to be adequitely visible, I will aim at eye level and eventually blink - but that is a pretty dull light, not a downhill-dar-trail-capable light, and only until I get to a convenience store for new batteries.

WRT blinding lights, many of the German LED lights adhere to their StVZO road standards, which mandate a sharp cutoff on the upper edge of the beam.

They're quite nice...still very visible to anyone viewing you from the front, but not likely to blind any cyclists, pedestrians, or motorists looking your way.

visible but not obnoxious > obnoxious > invisible (at least as far as I'm concerned, opinions may vary). As a motorist, I'd rather be aware of a cyclist's presence in a "Agh, that's frigging bright" kind of way than a "holyshit did I just hit a cyclist" kind of way. It's far from ideal, I hate being blinded no matter how I'm moving, and it's also got its dangers.

re: the "I didn't see them" excuse... On paper (and in the public's or justice system's opinion) it's a much better excuse than "I was driving too fast for conditions" or "I was not paying any attention". I suspect the latter two would be what drivers would say if they were telling the truth, in most situations.

i use a ridiculous light set to its middle or low setting at night. 480 lumens on high, which rules for flashing people who are driving like assholes. its a cygolite mitycrossand it's for mountain biking at night. in the daytime i use it on a random flashing pattern at full brightness.

i'm betting that the multi light setup on the millvale guy is one of these niterider minewt dual lights. also designed for mountain biking.

trails get DARK at night.

Huh...looks like B&M now offers a dynamo headlight for 2011 with daytime running lights and a high beam...I'm intrigued.

They were longer lights, almost looked like plain flashlights. I am gonna stake out one of these days and just ask the guy I think.

LED lights at the high end are getting insane. The 600 lumen Niterider I have from less than 2 years ago is now at 1500 lumens, and the model above that is at 3000 (!!) lumens.

They are also crazy money, but not much more than they were with 1/3 the lumens, and they run just as long.

They are flashlights from DealExtreme.com.