I appreciate that cyclists want to make sure they're seen by car drivers, but beaming ultra-bright flashing lights straight into the eyes of oncoming cyclists on a cycle lane surely creates a hazard that outweighs any benefits?!
The only ones I've been able to find are imports from Europe like B+M or Supernova, and a few expensive domestic ones like Outbound Lighting. If you walk into almost any bike shop in America they will have only circular optics that blind everyone.
The reason they're so bright and annoying is that you, dear motoring public, love complaining we're "not visible enough" in the comments of newspaper articles about people killed while riding a bicycle. Or in letters to the editor. Or to your legislators. Or at hearings about road infrastructure. Or hearings about road safety legislation. Or after you've plowed into one of us.
If you all would like to work on the whole "not killing large numbers of vulnerable road users", we can certainly look into the whole "make our bike lights not blink."
My state requires, at night:
* a rear light visible more than 500 feet * a rear reflector * pedal reflectors or ankle reflectors (both ankles) * front reflector (+500 ft) * front light (+500 ft) * wheel reflectors
Our state used to only require a rear light, but a state legislator refused to let a road safety bill pass unless he got put his paws all over it and increase equipment requirements for cyclists to "balance" out requiring drivers must give cyclists a minimum of three feet passing distance.
And yes, sometimes it is necessary to use a blinking mode to assure that we won't run out of battery (and thus have NO light) before we get home. On a long ride, for example, or in wintertime when lithium ion battery capacity plummets.
Except for all the dead cyclists of course.
https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...
Front and rear bike lights must be connected to a 6V/3W generator, ie a dynamoHub dynamos are indeed more expensive (around 50€ as a starting price) but since bikes are the primary means of transportation for many people, I think they usually see this as an acceptable price for the convenience it brings (I know I do).
Also, quite a few bikes here are leased (for around 20€/month, including all maintenance) and those always have a hub dynamo I think.
Here's a hint: Germany is extremely car-centric and makes regulations that cater to drivers, not road safety.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kilometres-cycled-per-in...
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/exposure-a...
Germany does rather well. Though the paper is 6 years old (and based on numbers even older) and the number of bike accidents in Germany have gone up since then.
Maybe there are some super expensive ones, but I don't think we can entirely blame cyclists. The design of affordable lights is just not very good.
This has been a feature of bike lights since at least the 50ies.
My 1975 vintage Peugeot bike already has a front light with a lens that directs the beam downwards, can be adjusted to point even further downwards with a screw, and even has a small shield on top of the lens to stop the beam from travelling upwards.
It works perfectly with the original dynamo and a cheap LED light bulb from Amazon.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikeforums.net-vbulletin/640x48...
What the hell, are your lights welded/glued in place to the bike frame or what?
Most bike lights are screwed in, and with those screws you can adjust the angle of the light both up/down and left/right like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71AKoH1V25L._AC_SL1500_....
Speaking for my German bubble, there are roughly two types of bike riders: those who invest 1k+ on their gear and those that buy a flea market bike for 100€ and then fit the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention). Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.
[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71nSkKcBIdL._AC_UF894,10...
It can't be that what he meant, since if you can adjust the vertical angle, you can stop blinding people.
>Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.
I know. I nearly ran over one who had no good lights, dark hoodie with no reflective gear, when I was reversing on a dark street, at night. Nearly shat myself after the close call.
I know students are poor, but God damn man, your life is worth more than a couple of Euros you're saving by running a crappy light who's battery died 2 years ago. Skip on a pizza/few beers in town one time and get a proper light.
You don't need to spend thousands of euros on gear to have a safe and visible cycling experience.
People are just stupid and lazy about their own safety, that's all. You only realize it when you switch from a cyclist to a driver, how dangerous these cyclists with no good lights are at night.
> the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention
Dude, that light you shared is a luxury compared to what most students I see have. Most have these god awful things with low battery: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Bicycle-Accessories-S...
You have misunderstood. Obviously I can angle the light, but it still has a circular beam pattern like a torch. Dipped car headlights are not like that. They have a sharp cut-off at the horizon so you can light the road brightly without blinding oncoming traffic. Very few bike lights have a beam pattern like that.
Definitely not on any modern light. They usually have a rectangular beam pattern.
https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit this is a solution
It's not exactly cheap (and probably can be found cheaper elsewhere), but then it's superbright 2400 lumen with 2 sets of leds (headlights and meeting/dipped lights) and a powerbank. You can switch with the buttons. I own a slightly different version (2200 lumen, same casing) and it's great.
edit: cheaper here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006446894517.html
But that applies more to running red lights, or using bicycle lanes in the wrong direction.
People choose the strobe, presumably because they feel more visible and therefore safer. I understand it, but it's annoying as hell.
Maybe these are not common in other locales but I don't understand why that seems to have offended some :/ I'm talking about rapidly flashing lights in narrow streets in cities from people pushing their bikes (and me having such bike too, and trying to remember to switch of the light when pushing bike manually to not annoy others)
All the bike-share bikes in the US have generator hub lights as well (except for the ebikes, of course.)
If cities actually invested in safe infrastructure the need for such lights would go away.
*: technically, you're allowed to use blinking bike lights during the day, but what's the point
That makes them useful during the day
I wish they had this rule in the UK.
Recently I met one of these idiots on a dark cycle path and I veered away from them instinctively (partly because I could see they were present but couldn't judge where they were) and then overcompensated and swerved behind them - very nearly hitting their child on a kid's bike behind! I hadn't seen their child because I was blinded by the adult's light. They probably thought they were keeping their child safe but they were really putting them in danger.
Blinking lights are not legal according to road code in Germany and I assume many other EU countries nor do they necessary improve your safety.
Yes, strobing lights do draw more attention (which is why they are reserved for emergency vehicles and emergency signaling) but makes it very difficult for the human eye to determine the distance to/from that object in motion on the road if it's always blinking, making their exclusive use on the road unsafe.
That's why your front and tail lights must be in a constant state. It's for your own safety too.
Street maintenance trucks and all such vehicles, at least in Europe, don't strobe their running lights which are constant-ON as on all road vehicles and the strobes are additional warning lights. So they get the best of both worlds.
But for cycling, blinking lights are stupid because you're strobing your only running light you need to see and be seen.
The UK has one quarter the deaths despite having ~3/4 of the population of Germany...
It's expected that if a lot more people cycle, you're gonna have more cycling deaths than in countries where fewer people cycle.
If nobody would cycle you'd have zero cycling deaths, hooray problem solved, you successfully gamed the metrics, if wining arbitrary metrics is the goal.
Was that your goal?
Random numbers alone mean nothing if they're meaningless and out of context. More people are killed every year by cows than by sharks. Does that make cows more dangerous than sharks or just that people are more likely to be around cows more often than around sharks?
If Germany has a higher population than UK, and also a higher percentage of people of that population cycle, then yeah you're gonna have more dead cyclists. D'uh!
Show me deaths per capita and cycling rates per capita, then we can talk about drawing a conclusion.
DE 5.5%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
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UK 1.7%: https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics
Great Britain has half the bike usage of Germany. Germany has 36 million bikers (43% of 84 million), Great Brittain about 12 million (19% of 68 million), so the stats line up more than you'd think at a first glance. The difference between Germany and Great Brittain becomes laugably obvious when you look at the statistics for how many people use bikes as a primary transport method (6% GB vs 21% DE).
That said, biking outside of large cities in Germany is kind of terrible, so I'm not at all surprised about how deadly cycling in Germany, though that may just be my spoilt Dutch take on things.
Edit: my source for these statistics: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...
My impression though is I spot blinking lights cyclists at closer distances than solid light. Especially in rainy weather.
And I absolutely have a more difficult time judging blinkers relative speed to me.
This is exactly the attitude that gets people killed. I hope you never experience the feeling of taking someone’s life.
I have lost count of the number of times a driver has sheepishly smiled and waved after my screaming got their attention and narrowly avoided a collision. It’s a routine experience for cyclists.
So my conclusion is I spot cyclists with solid lights more easily than ones with blinking lights unless you think there is a scenario where at close range blinking lights become easier to see and so I miss solid lights.
The problem is not even cars though, but other cyclists. Even with a cutoff beam it is easy to blind oncoming traffic if the light is not setup correctly. Flashing, it should be illegal.
The consensus amongst the cyclists there generally is that flashing front lights are a bad idea. The can be confusing and disorienting and are pretty unpleasant for other oncoming cyclists and pedestrians, not just other car drivers.
[citation needed]. They sure are annoying to look at, but I doubt about the improved visibility. Drivers are used to tracking positions and velocities of steady light sources - like those from cars, traffic lights, barriers, reflected lights, etc. Blinking lights are harder to track and are unusual; they seemingly should draw attention, but other than bicycles, they tend to show up on stuff like ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc. - that is, things safe to ignore.
In the same manner, a single bicycle light might not register as a vehicle in the minds of car drivers. By blinking the light the short-circuit is broken - or so the theory goes.
Surely they are just turning the light off half the time so half as visible?
There are also pedals that include front and rear lights. https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals
That being said, a cyclist without any lights at all emerged out of a pitch-black night 3 meters in front of me a few weeks ago. I only narrowly avoided a frontal crash. I prefer ultra-bright lights to this.
I mean I'm guilty myself, got myself a new bike a few years back that has a headlight built into the frame etc.
I get having bright lights, but try and angle them slightly downwards at least.
The Germans seem to have a standard (with TUV certification) for it, as of course they do. But we don't get much of that kit here.
(And because search engines are absolutely ruined: Searching for less, like "dim bike light" or "non-blinding" or whatever always winds up with finding more, instead.
"Oh, you're searching for a nice pleasant light that just illuminates the path in front of you at a warm color temperature without blinding anyone? Let me show you the MEGAFUCKER 9000! Powered by 48VDC and over 9000K, this light is guaranteed appear brighter than the sun and to ABSOLUTELY FUCK anyone within a kilometer! /r/fuckcars approved! You always knew you were an asshole, and with the MEGAFUCKER 9000 everyone else will know it too!"
Every single time.
(It's the same with anything else. Want a small, diminutive spatula so a small egg pan can actually be used for cooking instead of wall art? The more specific the search terms are, the bigger the fucking spatulas in the search results become.
Or even industrial or craft materials. Want rigid, open-cell, large-pore foam that doesn't sponge up water for a project? Good luck. Unless you already know exactly what product you need down to the SKU (which one can only glean via telepathy), the search results will consist entirely of opposite-world SUPER-SOFT EXTRA ABSORBENT foam.)
LLMs are absolutely terrible at finding specific, detailed facts that have any consistent element of truth to them, and the well from which they draw their knowledge was deliberately poisoned from the beginning.
Anyways, if you wan't 'german' standards, search with german words, like 'Fahrradlicht' and 'Fahrradbeleuchtung' and maybe you'll find some fitting pieces, though they won't be cheap.
That standard btw. is 'StVZO' (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassung...) as applied to any bicycle above 11Kg weight.
Common brands offering stuff adhering to the StVZO or otherwise reasonable specs are:
https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/
https://supernova-lights.com/en
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-c...
Or try:
https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 and see what's there.
Or there:
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/
Or here:
https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html
Amongst countless others, but I'm lazy, and dilligently deny delving deeper to deliver your data. :p
I bicycle a lot and I tell other cyclist that they need to adjust their lights all the time. At least they seem to take feedback. Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
No, one is actually unregulated, and the other is imperfectly regulated.
> Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
I can't imagine, with such a homogenising, negative attitude towards a group comprising millions of people, why they might not listen to you.
I’ve got a slightly dimmer light on my helmet that is great for getting people’s attention when they’re just not looking for bikes.
Heads should have rolled years ago when the problem became glaringly obvious.
What I do now on the highways is point my side mirrors all the way out and flip the rearview mirror. I already have deeply tinted windows.
Of course this doesn't help with oncoming traffic.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_sg/GUID-1C20964...
The description makes it sound like the Tesla implementation of "Adaptive headlights" is actually just "automatic high beams". The most common extra feature of adaptive headlights is corner-adaptive, the ability to pivot into the direction of travel. For the past years adaptive headlights could even mean "smart headlights" with selective dimming. Does Tesla include these features as well?
Anecdotally I can say that what stands out with (some?) Tesla headlights is that they keep the high beams shining for way too long and even the low beams seem to be overly bright. I can't say if this is down to the driver manually controlling the high beams or the general calibration of the incoming light sensor and the auto leveling of the headlight.
I think fancy Mercedes models have very advanced stuff like that. IIRC it's even crazier: in addition to compensate in the mirrors/rear-view mirror, they can also detect where another car or pedestrian is and adapt, constantly, precisely how their own beams are projected as to not blind anyone.
EDIT: other manufacturer do it too, it is called "Matrix headlights".
Which is great and all, but means things like they are projecting FRICKIN' LASERS into people's homes (especially when turning) or if you are a pedestrian that it doesn't detect properly (e.g. at some distance down a cluttered urban road etc) you get someone driving at you with really very uncomfortably bright lights shining in your face (I get this a lot when running at night - perhaps the models detect a pedestrian walking but not jogging?).
I am sure it works great in controlled conditions (and I have seen YouTube videos out on the clear open road where it detects oncoming vehicles nicely) but it feels pretty ineffective and anti-social in an urban/suburban environment, at least to me.
Here [1] is the VW ID.3. It's subtle, but notice how the area around the other cars is much darker. In real life it's kind of amazing to watch, as you see the LEDs follow the other cars on the road and "erase" them from the light.
I believe the ID.3 does blot out drivers in the opposite direction even in a curve.
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1135084_us-finally-allow...
Now even the regular beams they sure do work fine (the car even does fancy stuff as lighting the interior of a turn when you take a sharp turn at night) but honestly I find many cars, including mine, have headlights to bright.
Worse: on these new cars with super fancy headlights if I'm not mistaken you cannot even configure where they aim at anymore. It's all automated. It used to be the case on older cars where it was easy to configure and you could aim the regular beam moderately low as to be sure to not annoy anyone.
I don't bother flashing at people anymore because I figured out they may simply have a car where the regular beams are simply too bright too.
My dad's 20yo Citroën had self-leveling lights, which weren't user adjustable (at least not in an obvious way). However, even though the lights were relatively bright (Xenon), nobody ever "complained" about them, they somehow always found a way to not blind oncoming cars while lighting the road very well.
They were fixed pattern, with the high beam on a manual switch, though, so they never tried to guess whether there was someone in the oncoming lane.