Kevin R

Have a look guys

Kevin R

My setup

delbiker1 

Bright clothes , flashing lights, reflective material.

Quote: 79pmooney ( "One of the issues with super bright strobes and the like is pissing motorists off. I for one as a driver do not like lights so bright I lose any semblance of night vision".)

I do not know about where you live, but where I am, a lot of motorists get pissed at bicyclists for no reason other than the fact that the bike is on the road. They do not care that bicyclists have the same legal right to be on that road. The thing that most increases a bicyclists safety is defensive, self awareness of what is going on around you at all times. Never assume the other person sees you and will cede the right of way when they are legally obliged to. This absolutely includes other bicyclists and pedestrians. It is crazy on our road infrastructure, and getting crazier.

Leisesturm

Bontrager, B&M, Cygolite et al have different motivations than yours truly. The light manufacturers are tasked with the mission of socially engineering a significant number of cyclists to use a product designed for nightime use during daylight hours. Why? Because the VAST number of cyclists do little or no riding at night. I'm certain Kevin is a Child of God and his motives are pure. Bontrager, less so I am afraid. Were they stand up engineers they would have admitted that daytime running lights don't achieve any greater daytime safety than hi-viz helmets and jerseys. For a cyclist that never rides at night, the need to buy an expensive head and tailight combo is ... zero.

delbiker1 

I am going to continue to use my lights during daylight hours. Someone trying to convince me that there is a zero percent chance of it helping my visibility to others; be it motorists, cyclists or pedestrians, with or without data to support that theory, means absolutely nothing to me. My safety is up to me. If I think it helps, I am going to use it.

Kevin R

Yes; I am a child of God

To be honest I bought those lights because i wanted something VERY BRIGHT for use in daylight......In Trinidad cyclists dont get much respect and I am merely doing my part to ensure my safety.......along with wearing high visibility helmet and clothing /shoes......

I am well pleased with the lights; many have asked me about them and remarked at their brightness, I have noticed drivers tend to honk more often also; this helps with knowing they are behind me......

I wont try to hard sell my lights; bontrager didnt give me a discount

But i will say i feel that bit more safe; they work for me; and its my responsibility to ensure my safety.......at the end of the day there will always be irresponsible motorists out there; and heaven forbid any one of us should be run over.

Leisesturm

See how you try to twist my words. I did not say daytime running lights have zero chance of helping your visibility. I said they are no better at it than a (cheaper) hi viz helmet and/or (cheaper) hi viz jersey. See what I did there?

jadocs

I can tell you that my front light (flash mode) has prevented motorists from rolling through a stop sign on a side road, preventing a T-bone situation. I can see their faces when they roll up completely oblivious, because they are not looking for anything besides another car. They catch my light and slam on the brakes.

njkayaker

This is, almost certainly, incorrect.

Lights (particularly flashing) work where visible clothing doesn't (like when the cyclist is under tree cover and the following car is in bright sunlight).

The lights are also visible from farther away. And more easily recognized as a cyclist too.

You don't need "expensive" lights. You can get a set of lights that is sufficient for less than either a typical (not expensive) helmet or jersey.

njkayaker

Yup.

JW Fas

Brightly colored clothing doesn't make a world of difference, especially compared to reflective high-vis attire.

njkayaker

At night. And being directly illuminated by headlights.

Outside of that, reflectivity doesn't really work.

Leisesturm

Whatever. I don't run my lights during the daytime and don't intend to. I could easily halve the life of my batteries by doing that. I buy decently priced battery packs and by not using them in the daytime their life is considerably longer. I may have told the story about walking on the street one night and coming to a corner where I waited for a car that was obviously going to turn across my path to do so. S/he did not. I was not wearing any kind of hi-viz. In fact I was coming from a gig and was entirely in black. In full darkness. On the sidewalk and yet I was visible to this motorist and they waited till I crossed before they made their turn. Drivers see what they need to see. When they don't it is because they are distracted for one reason or another. That's at night. In the daytime its even less likely that an alert driver will not see you regardless of what you are flashing or not flashing. Cyclists get hit because they did not properly interpret a drivers inattention. I do. If a driver sees me. Great. If s/he doesn't. No biggie. They are not going to get the chance to hit me. It's worked for me for decades. Best of all its cheaper than the cheapest knock-off strobe on Amazon.

wphamilton

I tend to this same rational approach. Yes it's true that headlights are more attention grabbing than no headlights and flashing is more attention grabbing still. But again, I don't care how much attention I grab - I want the driver to see me and register that I'm there, and those ARE two distinct things. For me it's not worth the downsides of flashing headlights (which I won't go into). The headlight might or might not be on during the day, usually not.

Kevin R

I wonder why they instituted daylight running lights on vehicles (relatively huge compared to bicycles) in Canada and USA?

wphamilton

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that there is no evidence that daytime running lights provide enough benefit to justify a federal regulation. DRL are more popular in countries having lower ambient light in the daytime, and of course you want lights at dusk and early dawn, for the same reasons.

Clyde1820

It can be dangerous to assume it's all due to distraction.

Myself, I've experienced inability to discern shadows and colors when conditions are right ... with background patterns and colors, the nearby vehicle colors, shadows from lighting and buildings, and then a cyclist or motorcyclist. Even once didn't immediately (visually) pick up the back third of an 18-wheel big-rig truck backing out into a multi-lane road, due to the colors of the truck blending in perfectly with the background coloring/textures on the buildings at that spot.

Point is, it's hard to tell what a given driver's likely to see or not see, or whether one's inability to see something is due to inattentiveness or distraction or something else.

No matter how little or much lighting and color/contrast differences improve one's chances of a given person seeing those things, IMO it's a worthwhile consideration.

Fact is, with motor vehicles, all sorts of effort is put into requiring vehicles to have certain sizes, colors, contrasts with lights. That's not all done for zero reason. As others have suggested in the case of "running" lights on vehicles, it can aid in visually picking up the vehicle sooner rather than later.

Same would be the case with smaller vehicles.

Even to the point of aiding a runner. Having done tens of thousands of miles of running, back in the day, much of it in less-than-perfect lighting conditions, a runner can benefit hugely from being better-seen via the use of brighter clothing, better-contrasting clothing, reflectors, lights.

Of course, better odds of being seen might be for everyone.

But for those who value it, every little bit can help.

JMO

Leisesturm

I don't know if you've ever driven in the US and Canada but there are "intersections" here where two highways may cross one another with no signalling. Think about it. An overcast day, a sports sedan, relatively low and moving VERY fast towards the intersection. Having headlights on does make the approaching sedan stand out that bit more and when you are talking about 60mph and more, every little bit can help.

A bicycle is a stationary object relatively speaking. It 'should' be operating as far to the right of the road as practicable. An oncoming vehicle should in no way be a danger to a bicycle that is operating per the vehicle code. A bike does not need to stand out to oncoming traffic because there is a buffer called the travel lane between oncoming traffic and a bicycle. As far as daylight rear lights, that is another ball of wax. IMO the best thing a cyclist can do for themselves is be as far out of the main path of motor traffic as is possible. Most drivers have visual acuity more than adequate to register the presence of a bicycle and rider ahead of them in daylight. I know many cyclists that are prepared to yield the right of way when BLAM. That is your cyclist who has just registered the presence of a car behind and starting to move over right to let the car pass. Too late, of course, the car was overtaking at 60mph. The cyclist was doing 17mph. The cyclist had no chance. The driver misjudged how quickly the cyclist could get out of his way and did not slow down. Tragic.

I don't wait till I register the presence of a car behind. It's too late then. I ride the fog stripe or to the right of it if there is a nice shoulder and overtaking traffic can slide right by. In more urban situations visibility is rarely an issue. I always yield to vehicles that outweigh me by tons. I check my speed at all intersections even if the light is mine. Several times in my life I've seen a car with its right turn indicator on come straight through the intersection at me! I KNOW that many cyclists seeing that indicator would take it as Gospel that the car will turn and not present a threat so they keep the hammer down and BLAM. Safety is about what YOU do. Not what drivers do. Drivers don't need to see me. I'd rather they didn't actually. When drivers see you, most are good hearted, they stop and wait, at bicycle speeds that could be a long wait. Drivers are mainly decent but dumb and lacking in judgement about things like bicycle dynamics. They should just get on with it and go, but they sit there fuming and getting frustrated because a car would have been long gone. Its stressful for them, stressful for me ... when they don't see you they behave much more naturally and you can anticipate their actions and work around them.

Kevin R

Cool

I have driven in both countries, i appreciate your point.

genec

Well, I am not that poster, and I do these days use a combination of blinking and steady LEDs on my bike both fore and aft, depending on the traffic and background lighting situation. My Niterider system allows for this, easily.

But for the sake of your first sentence... in the early '80s, at the height of all the really crappy incandescent lighting that was available for cyclists at the time, I did use, for a time, an actual strobe.

It was from a Navy MOB module, and I mounted the xenon flash tube on a short fiberglass rod, about 4 feet up from the rear rack of my bike. I rode some dark high speed roads, commuting late at night in those days... and really wanted to be seen.

I only did it for a while... the bright flash strobing on dark roads, while using a crappy headlight, was just too eerie for me to take.

I tried a lot of different "see me" schemes back in those days... finally settling on three Belt Beacons, arranged in a triangle, mounted on an aluminum plate, and wired together with one switch... this was mounted to the rails of my Brooks saddle, facing aft. For a headlight, I used a halogen lamp (high tech, at the time) wired to a Sanyo generator... which rode on the top of the rear tire, vice the sidewall. I had removed the Sanyo regulator circuit, and let the halogen have all the "juice" it wanted... which made it quite bright on downhill runs... which fortunately were short enough to not burn out the bulb. (I think the whole arrangement was somewhat mechanically self limiting, due to the friction of the generator... and my desire to not out ride my light.)

I used that for about 5 years or so... until a recharchable system, and eventually, Niterider came along.

But indeed, at one point, I did have a strobe.

jon c. 

So you're saying there's no need for lights because the cars can see you just fine? But even though they see you they're still going to run into you?

Makes perfect sense.

njkayaker

Pot...

... meet kettle.

njkayaker

???

Flashing headlights say "cyclist" just like flashing rear lights do.

During the day, solid headlights are not bright enough to be very noticeable. Flashing makes them much more noticeable.

No one really cares what you choose to do, but the notion that one thing works (flashing rear lights) but something else that is the same sort of thing doesn't makes no sense.

njkayaker

There also other stuff going on.

What you are seeing is highly filtered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

njkayaker

??? The point of this story can only be that "hi-viz" clothing and lights aren't useful to be seen at night.

Most of the time, motorists see you. Recounting a single example of that doesn't mean they will always see/notice you.

Do you know what "anecdote" means?

I'm assuming you don't use a helmet (which would be fine by me; I don't care).

Where they do need to stand out is at intersections, where a lot of collisions occur.