Originally Posted by
CliffordK
I disagree.
In some places in the urban setting, there are just too many lights.
Low street lights.
Auto Lights.
etc.
The strobes help differentiate the bike from the background.
Nonetheless, the power should be set to a medium level. Not super-bright, not super-dim.
And, point the focal point of the light away from people's eyes.
Personally, I find the strobes annoying for riding, although those sinusoidal bright/dim lights aren't too bad.
Slow blink rate, maybe, but I have a hard time picturing a scenario where the light would get lost in the background at any distance where I actually need to know your position. Bike paths tend to be very narrow, and we're either looking straight at the other rider ahead or the other rider is around a bend, in which case, I'm not going to see the light anyway.
Fast strobes don't help anything, and make it very hard to a) judge the position as we close b) obscure the visibility of other nearby bicycles. I mentioned the incident where the fast strobe on Dad's bike made it impossible to tell that his kid was riding alongside him.
I really have no problems with the bright dim lights, but I haven't seen a lot of them. The problem with the strobe is it makes your pupils constantly set for the wrong level of light. Slower transitions and/or blinking rates don't have that effect because the pupils actually do adjust fairly fast, just not several times a second.