New helmet design with LED lighting
 

I’m seeing newer helmet designs these days with innovative safety features. I just saw a helmet today that had a bright white LED strip on the front and a thick red LED strip on the back. The LED strip on the back lit up like a brake light on a car when the biker was braking. The same back LED would blink on the left side for left turns and on the right for right turns. I am curious what the community thinks of these newer designs.

1. Are newer helmets with highly visible LED lighting legitimately safer than traditional, less visible helmets?
2. Do you think the newer technology could save more lives on the roads?
3. How many of you would seriously consider upgrading to a helmet with LED technology because of the visibility/safety benefits?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

I have been told by drivers that those of use who have a taillight zip tied to our helmet are much more visible when they are coming up to us in the dark trying to figure out what we are. The more lights and reflectors you have on the rear the better in general. The people who hit you on purpose are going to hit you no matter what you do.

Very true.

Lights on a helmet---can't hurt. Brake lights and directional signals----not convinced. If a person is spending that much time watching your helmet lights, s/he needs to get his or her eyes back on the road.

It has been shown and tested and all that .... that the best way to identify as a cyclist via lights is by a light on the pedal or on the rider's ankle. For some reason nothing else on the road that looks like the motion of a cyclist's foot.

Headlights on the helmet? Lots of riders use them, but they are serious headlights, not LED light bars ......

Lights seem safer than no lights (at night anyway), but is integrated helmet lighting really any safer than traditional bike lighting that is clipped or strapped on? I doubt it.

I think the main benefit of an integrated LED light helmet is a sleek form factor. You can get the same safety benefit from a cheap clip-on LED.

Integrated lights on a helmet could work well, sure. I wouldnt buy one if the helmet weighed an extra 100g though. And the light would need to pop out easily for charging because its dumb to have to plug in an entire helmet.
Having 2 rear lights on different parts of the bike, one in solid mode and one flashing, would help make someone more visible. This option is probably cheaper and lighter than a helmet light.

Earlier this year I bought a MET Rivale MIPS helmet. Prior Rivale helmets were designed to accept a flashing light made by MET that easily connects and disconnects for charging. If it fit my helmet, I would have bought it because the design is 6 small LED lights that curve for more visibility at angles, its $40, and there is a smart setting that auto turns the light on in dark conditions(tunnel, heavy shade, etc).

I don't think I'd care about the added weight on the helmet so much, but I definitely wouldn't pay any extra for integrated lighting in a helmet. It seems kind of gimmicky to me, and I'd probably still use lights on my bike regardless.

Integrated lighting on urban/city commuting bikes is far more interesting to me.
I've always thought the integrated lighting on the newer Lyft/Divvy bikeshare bikes is slick:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...60fcaab494.jpg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4c84ff64dd.jpg

If there's a correlation between visibility and safety, then presumably yes. But "safer" is a pretty vague term.

Maybe, but until you amass a large sample size of users and collect lots of crash data, you'll never really know.

You'd have to prove the benefits first. Lots of crashes and injuries occur that have nothing to do with visibility or lighting.

In todays world lights and visibility are critical for rider safety as most drivers are using their garmin, their phone, or the screen embedded in their dash. Anything we can do to get noticed without blinding others is desirable.

Very interesting first post. My spidey sense went off that you may be related to this product in some way, perhaps not <- it has been wrong.

From a functional perspective, you will need two sets of batteries to maintain (helmet and signaling device). Then there is the issue of placement of the signaling device for ease of use.

LEDS, from my experience are very directional. A few degrees of off-angle can practically negate their effectiveness. So on a helmet which people may use sitting up, on the drops, on the hoods, etc will present a real challenge to be seen unless they are an array pointing at various angles.

Do I think it is a good idea and will sell? Yeah probably but don’t think it will be a mega-hit. It will be popular with gadget and super-safety minded, but it will take effort to overcome the more set in their ways or the dreaded - “serious” cyclist. I’ve been wrong on more than one occasion.

I haven't seen any lit up helments since that kickstarter that took so long to deliver that everyone was surprised when they got their helmet.

Nothing against it, but unless it is done Really well .... another solution looking for a problem. A gadget, a gimmick, a way for a person to try to pry open a niche to fill with a product, rather than a product filling an existing niche.

The directional signals are the biggest cue---not something I would imagine an active (whether serious or frivolous) cyclist would conceive. No driver is or should be staring at your helmet long enough to see if those lights are simply flashers or directionals ... and given a closing speed of say, 35 to 75 feet per second, by the time a diver has you in the headlights and can see what that odd flashing is, it would be too late.

They might work at an intersection .... but if I am turning right, I am to the right of the line of cars and I just go. They don't see the back of my head. If I am turning left, I am on the right side or more usually in the middle of the left-turn lane, and I make Sure they see me---I am in their headlights, for one thing, and I often look at the driver behind me and make eye contact if I think there is any chance of an issue.

If these had been around forever, and everyone knew that a progressive flashing light from center to right on a cyclist's helmet meant "left turn," then ,.,,, maybe, in those few instances when drivers even look. However, because drivers won't know why the cyclist has those weird flashers on his/her helmet .... the meaning will not be communicated, and thus the lights themselves are meaningless and useless.

As for being seen, I will say again---studies have shown that the most immediately identifiable light signal to tell a driver that the thing up ahead is a cyclist, ids a pedal or ankle light---But because there is no standard pedal and no easy way to attach a light to a pedal where the heel of the shoe won't obscure it, and not many people want to strpp a light to their legs, for whatever reason .........

I agree. Unless the turn signals are spaced quite a ways apart, it's going to be hard for a motorist a hundred feet behind you to know what you're signaling or what your intentions are, because they'll just be seeing a blinking light. The lights would have to be spread out a couple feet apart like motorcycle turn signals, but I don't want a helmet with moose antlers. Might be different if the driver is right behind you, but even then I wouldn't count on them understanding the turn signal. I can't even count on them understanding hand signals.

That's what I do. I have one light on the upper seat stay which I usually have on solid, then two blinky lights further down the seat stays on either side of the back wheel. Or, for a change, I can leave the two beside the wheel on solid and put the other one on flash.

If I had more time I would photoshop moose antlers onto a picture of a cyclist .... fantastic image.

The internet is a great thing... no need to photoshop when a quick google search usually provides anything you're looking for.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3aba9f9a5.jpeg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d672f7c392.jpg

I've been using a Lumos helmet for a few years . The turn signals help drivers determine what the rider is going to do at an intersection. I have been told many times by drivers when I'm in a turning block that they like the helmet. I still use hand signals and flashing tail and head light on the bike. The helmet isn't heavy at all and very comfortable with the adjustable inner head band. It was a gift from my wife after we saw it at an Apple store , it pairs with the Apple watch but I use the handle bar remote. The charge lasts about 4 hours on flashing mode. I would not recommend it for night time as a head light , it is too far from the road but great for extra visibility.This pic doesn't really show the brightness well . The white turns to a yellow flasher when turning
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b72e8cacdd.jpg

Dude, did anyone anywhere in this thread give even the slightest indication that we wanted to pollute our theoretical posturings with actual facts and real-world experience?

You keep your empirical research results where they belong---in a laboratory. This is BF. The only real fact is wild speculation, and the crazier, the more real.

:D :D :D :D

cars get used to the latest fashion in bike lights, they learn who we are.

i got into trouble with a DIY lighting invention,

many, if not all car headlamps are halogen affairs in a rectangular plastic housing.

very light . why not put one on a bike? if you can't beat em, join em, right?

wrong! drivers thought i was a car with one headlight out! this caused many problems. if they were stopped at a light and i came screaming down the bike lane on their right, they thought it was some drunk guy with one light driving on the sidewalk. this resulted in panicked drivers trying their best to avoid getting hit by the "errant driver" driving on the sidewalk.

or, i could be riding alongside traffic at about 15 mph and a line of cars would be slowing down for a red light, at a certain point, i would start to overtake the slowing vehicles as i had a clear path ahead. this would result in people swerving over to the left to avoid the car using the roadway illegally and trying to take cuts to get to the light first. you could almost sense the panic without actually hearing them screaming inside their vehicles. luckily there were no accidents, but that light came off the bike as soon as i got home, i am sure their is probably some law against a bike impersonating a car in california. it was very inefficient system anyway as car lights are made to last forever so they over-voltage the lamps, so a 12.6 volt batt does not light them up very well. you need about 13.6 volts to really get a car lamp lit up, which is not a standard voltage for gel cells.

the craziest system i had was a huge 12 amp hour gel cell on the back of the mountain bike. that thing must have weighed 10 pounds! but coupled with a 100 watt MR16 halogen spot light, you could do hi speed decents at night in the 40 MPH range and not even worry, i was the last one up the hill but the first one down. it was like riding in the daytime only better. you could see a bug on a sage brush leaf from 100 feet away, along with every pebble in the road as they were contrasted better at night. but as soon as you stopped, the light housing would start to smoke and melt. other riders liked it because they didn't even need to use their lights.

I only use lights at night. I don't ride at night. Therefore I don't use lights.

A decade and a half ago there was the Pedalite, an LED pedal energized by the turn of the pedal on its spindle.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...82bfda2f65.jpg

I think market forces found this too clever by half.

These days there are some hopefuls promoting what they call Arclight Pedals:

https://bikerumor.com/2021/09/10/arc...st-bike-light/

Haha! Yeah, that was back in ‘12 or ‘13, and I’ve still got my Torch v.1! It works, too, although one of the front LEDs is inop, and a strip of the microshell is delaminated from the EPS in the front. I know they came out with at least a v2 in subsequent years, and appear to still be around: https://www.torchapparel.com/collections/t2-bike-helmet

Mine looks a little rough, I guess…


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...59fe8e019.jpeg
Original Torch helmet

Back in the halogen days of bike headlights, there were nighttime bike commuters with these very bright lights coming toward me (I had one too) that I could have sworn was a car with a headlight out or a motorcycle. They were blinding unless the savvy commuter would shield oncoming by partially covering their light. They worked great and had a hard time outriding the light the halogens provided. As a flashing light, there was no mistake it was a cyclist and could be seen a mile or more away.

My first thought that came to mind when reading about the turn signals and brake lights wasn't regarding motorists, but rather other cyclists. More specifically, group rides. I can see the benefits of the features for that.

It's nice to see all the innovations with the bright low power consumption LED's. Beats the day lights outta those old C battery strap on the ankle flash lights. Bring um on. Maybe with more lights I can get those drivers to look up from thier cell phones long enough to make a safe pass...

Still waiting for those light up LED flashing shoes in mens size 12... Can't wait...

OH!!! And these I just gotta have...