Originally Posted by
PJay120
First. As someone has noted, the human brain will detect the blinking light, but because of the blinking it cannot put a location on it. This is contrary to the idea that a driver would want to have the bike get noticed, and placed in the driver's mind at the right location in the local 3D space. I think of trying to track a firefly when I think of this point. It is hard to track a firefly through local 3D space. We would try ot catch them sa they appeared in the evening, but when things were pretty normally illuminated by the sun, so not in the dark. We would have to get close enough to see the black body as well as the blinking light in order to track, and then catch.
??? A cyclist isn't a firefly. We are talking about rearward facing lights.
These rear lights are being seen, pretty much, as a stationary light source (the light isn't moving across the field of view). Being noticed from farther away increases the perception of it being a stationary light source. That is, tracking isn't a problem because it isn't tracking.
If the item is understood by the driver to be a cyclist, they have some idea how the cyclist is going to move.
In any case, by the time tracking becomes an issue (when the car is close enough to pass), the headlights should be covering the cyclist Having reflective or bright gear should help with this too. When the car is close, the rear light may not even be visible.
Originally Posted by
PJay120
Second: Years ago, in another biking discussion, someone posted a study that said that a drunk or exhausted driver can be drawn to a blinking light somehow - somehow by our psychology of vision, etc. This is like how we cyclists "pick a line," and that phenomenon of picking your line sustains you through some pretty dicey situations. As a new cyclist, I heard to NOT look at the pothole, or gravel wash, I was about to go through, but to imagine my Line, and follow my line, and allow reflexes and instinct to get me through. The blinking light draws attention to the blinking light, instead of just getting the object registered in 3D space, and allowing instinct or reflex to work as it does, and allowing the exhausted or drunk driver to fix the bike in local 3D space, and avoid it. Something about the attention being drawn to the light anew with each blink.
Drunk drivers run into all sorts of things without flashing lights too.
It's not clear whether this is a real (substantial) risk or whether it's a risk greater than not using flashing lights.
And the flashing lights might work for some drunk drivers even if it doesn't work for all of them.
There should be
many more non-drunk drivers than drunk ones.