Flashing rear light enhances driver perception of cyclist ahead

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122699687#Comment_122699687

It varies depending on the type of bike but a lot of city bikes and e-bikes now have semi-permanent lights, with e-bikes using the bike's battery, I think, a lot of the time.

Our bakfiets has a dynamo hub in the front wheel and a permanently mounted reflector with an LED built in and a battery compartment, bolted to the rear carrier.

There are issues with headlights like that getting vandalized or stolen, but I think the reflector-with-LED design generally gets ignored. It's not usually an especially powerful light, but I like mounting a half-Watt LED just beside it, for that big-lit-up-surface effect I mentioned earlier. The one I have now is an interesting variant, in that some of the light is channeled into the reflector so the reflector lights up, again increasing the surface area that is emitting.

On the back of the rear carrier, if there is one, is maybe the best place for the rear light for most users, if there were to be a default location; bags and coats aren't going to obscure something mounted that far back.

Lights still have to removable in some way and replaceable anyway. I've already had to replace the dynamo-powered headlight on the bakfiets. LEDs last years, but not forever.

magicbastarder

regarding lights integrated into head tubes, i remember seeing comment on the van moof (which had this) that the problem is a low speed, the light doesn't necessarily point where you want to go, i.e. which way the handlebars are facing.

tomasrojo

Yeah, the more usual design is to mount a semi-permanent light to the fork crown, which does result in the light pointing where you're going, but it's easy to wrench lights like that off for a joke or whatever motivates people who do things like that.

MojoMaker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122698887#Comment_122698887

Looks like a quality bit of kit. Just ordered a set 👍️

Macy0161

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122697396#Comment_122697396

Well the RSA/ Garda always push "be safe be seen" so no wonder people think brighter is better, and with no standard, there's no dispersal pattern test/ standard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122696833#Comment_122696833

We have specific legislation around lights in the 1963 unenforced. Doubt many modern lights comply with a sizing of lens of 2 square inches? The garda hand out lights much smaller, and I'd question do they comply with the visible from "500 feet" requirement.

Seth Brundle

I got a set of lights from the RSA about ten years ago and they were absolutely atrocious, even as a freebie. It was a single diode which offered very little light.
They were in no way compliant with the 1963 legislation nor were they in any way safe for use from a practical perspective.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122704043#Comment_122704043

I got one of those too. Beyond useless in every conceivable sense of the word.

I'll admit to being bamboozled by the options out there for buying lights. Leaving aside build quality, ergonomics, battery size style, button functionality etc, I'd love to just know when I go into a shop that there are maybe 4 options (say daylight only, urban night, rural night and off road), and I can't go wrong as long as I chose the option suitable to my cycling. But there isn't, and the packaging is a mix of jargon and sales pitch.

I look at the light output on my bike at night and I've very little way of judging it from other road users' perspective. It has different 'lumen' settings (or is that lux… WTFK…) and I can approximate how far ahead I can see. That's about it. Someone posted a link to a Trek light set a few posts back… over €100 and really all I have to go on are customer reviews. I'll stick with my Lidl lights for now. 10% of the price… not willing to splurge €100 to just take a chance on something else being better.

Given the amount of time spent telling us how important visibility is and the general obsession with hi viz, you'd think it shouldn't be too hard to put in place a standardised regime for bike lighting.

tomasrojo

Part of the reason for the obsession with hi-viz over lights is that adequate hi-viz costs maybe less than €1 wholesale per (sleeveless, zipless, seamless) "jacket". They can create a demand that they can also meet with the type of money the state is willing to spend on this issue. But for the type of money the state is willing to spend on this issue, you get a light that wouldn't illuminate the inside of shoe box, and, as said, doesn't meet the legal minimums. No warning not to use this legally deficient light except as a secondary light though because, lights are, implicitly, now secondary to hi-viz, probably for the economics.

Wishbone Ash

A first for me - I lost my rear light on the club ride this morning. Only noticed at the tea stop and I must have been at the back when it happened as no one noticed it falling off. At least it was daylight. At night, I always have 2 in case I lose one (but never did until today).

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122704909#Comment_122704909

I'd argue if the RSA had negotiated a deal with a major bike light producer they would not have been far off decent lights for a fiver a set (Aldi had great ones for 20 a set years ago). Instead they spent millions on Hi Vis, many if which turned out not to be technically Hi Vis and hand out lights we used to use as table decorations at our work Christmas party.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122705764#Comment_122705764

My go-to set are Lidl's version of the Lezyne ones… I got a few sets last year when they were selling them off for a €10 or something ridiculous. As you say, they could easily have done a deal if they had any interest in providing actual benefits/ improvements as opposed to tokenism and box-ticking.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122707196#Comment_122707196

Imagine if they put up a tender for the lights, put up the specs, lumens, lux beam pattern etc, and then gave LIDL or ALDI a call to let them know it was there and that their last batch of lights met this criteria. 2 friends of mine run different businesses importing from China. If they got a nudge, they would find those lights at a euro each, sell them to the government for a fiver each, become millionaires but it would never happen.

JMcL

A quick search on AliExpress shows light sets for a few euros. Now, they're probably utter rubbish, but they're probably still better than the tea lights given out by the RSA. I'd imagine a reasonable set could be found with a bit of research which could then be bought in bulk for a low price.

I've generally been using the Aldi set (note: make sure the big screw holding the front light to the mount is tight - there ain't much in the way of threads going into the light body which I found out the hard way. Boy do those lights shatter with a bang!) which I find fine for daytime riding. I want to get a better set for getting out now that the days are on the wane, but having been stung by a reasonably high end Lezyne's battery trashing itself (non-replaceable) in a fairly short period of time, I'm wary about spending another packet.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122718518#Comment_122718518

I'm the exact same. The Lezyne and Lidl ones are great… front lights are almost identical in design and light output/ beam direction. But my Lidl versions have comfortably outlasted the Lezyne ones for battery life. It shouldn't be a case of choosing between shelling out big money to take a chance that you'll get correspondingly high performance and build quality or alternatively browsing the internet for cheap lights from China that may/ may not give good performance, on the basis that if they don't you haven't flushed much money down the toilet.

I'm partly annoyed at myself for not having the tech smarts to figure it all out and get the best bang for buck on a risk-free basis, and partly annoyed that it should come down to that for such an important safety feature.

Anyway, that's my last rant on the issue… I think we may have veered slightly off topic… apologies OP!

magicbastarder

lifted from twitter. No translation needed.

CramCycle

Driving along the N25, e scooter with flashing red light, First of all, really highlighted how great lights are, scooter was visible from well over a km away. The issue I had though was while it didn't affect me, I did struggle to estimate the distance of the scooter from me until I was substantially closer. Maybe all in my head but it put me off using flashing lights.

standardg60

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122836008#Comment_122836008

Trying hard not to be facetious here and probably failing, but noticing the scooter because the light is flashing from well over a km away, but then determining that you're more likely to hit them because the light isn't static, is pushing it. No one can judge the distance of a static light until they're closer either.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122836402#Comment_122836402

Apologies, a misunderstanding here, at no point did I think there was a risk of hitting the scooter, or an increased risk of me hitting the scooter because the light was flashing. Just a statement that it was harder to judge distance until relatively closer but that could just be a me problem, and for that reason I will stick with static lights but make no mistake, if a driver is paying attention and driving appropriately, there was no danger there and it certainly was not any worse with the flashing light.

To be a pedant, I went on to google maps, it was 750m, more due to a curve in the road rather than a limitation of the lights, still happy with how good decent lights are.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122700676#Comment_122700676

The advantage of the integrated, dynamo connected lights is that they're less likely to be usable by anyone else, without getting involved in fiddly wiring.

Flinty997

When I was cycling good lights and some flashing made a noticeable difference to cars reacting to my presence.

That said I got knocked off when I had 4 lights and two of them flashing. Some people just aren't looking.

07Lapierre

Taxi driver overtook me directly into oncoming traffic last night. He knew the traffic was approaching, He knew the road had a Solid white line, He knew i was there as he sat on my back wheel for about 800meters before overtaking. (I use a Garmin Varia rear light along with a Hope District rear light. Up front i have a Hope R2 1100 lumen light). the moment he started to overtake me, he had to move to the left and forced me into the ditch! He was just an impatient muppet and there seems to be a lot of them about lately.

Tenzor07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122837713#Comment_122837713

That wasn't just your normal car driver, it was a "Professional" ;-)

vavava voom

MOD VOICE: Trolling

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122837358#Comment_122837358

Yeah, think they're not too likely to be stolen, but since I came out of my kids' preschool and found a diminutive person pulling on the headlamp of the bakfiets I have wondered. Still, nobody has ever actually torn the headlamp off yet!