seypat

Noxgear FTW! A must have if you venture out at night. I've been running in the Tracer since it came out a few years ago. I got the Tracer lamp as an Xmas present this year.

https://www.noxgear.com/?wickedsourc...SAAEgJq-vD_BwE

jimincalif

In daylight I use flashing, both front and rear, based on my own observations of other riders when I’m driving. In the dark I change my taillight and one headlight to steady-strobe, they are on constantly but flash brighter. The other headlight is off in daylight and on steady in the dark. And at night I wear a reflective vest (the strap sort, so easy to carry in a pocket) as well as reflective ankle straps. Most bike lights are relatively small compared to vehicles’ lights, so even bright ones can easily be overlooked amid all the other stuff a driver is looking at. The flashing effect over the steady light and the reflective clothes just attracts a bit more attention. I also put a rear reflector on in case my taillight fails, at least keeps me legal. I use two smaller headlights as it differentiates me a bit and I have redundancy in case one fails.

njkayaker

Looks like the subjects were looking at a "vi.deo" projected on a big screen.

Here's the full text:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...01457523004657

------------------------------------------

The study referenced in the following indicated that flashing was much better than steady.

https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buy...ng-bike-lights

Eyes Roll

A safety-colored vest provides all-round visibility, day or night, and the bright safety color catches the attention of vehicles approaching the intersection from the side streets, prompting them to stop. Good luck with bike head lights and tail lights providing the same. Your job when riding a bike is to control the factors you can control and to make yourself visible. Don't be complacent. Wear a safety colored vest when you are bike-riding. It makes a noticeable difference. Safety yellow vest provides the best visibility. The next best color is safety orange.

I always use a blinking red tail light at night. I rarely use a tail light (or head light) during the day, unless it is foggy, rainy, or snowy during the day. I could, but I save the battery/charge of the tail light (and also head light) for the night time riding since I often ride my bike 3 hours at night between 7 p.m. and midnight.

A safety colored vest and a helmet, always. A steady white head light and a blinking red tail light, at night. With these safety measures, I never felt unsafe when riding my bikes.

njkayaker

Clothing doesn't address at all whether flashing or steady lights work better.

No one is saying you can't use both. "safety-colored" requires being illuminated by headlights at night. Lights don't. At times, the "safety green" isn't very visible. So, it's fairly clear that there are some differences in where each is effective. It's probably a mistake to rely on only one or the other.

Bob Ross

I find ^^^this surprising, only because I've been told for years that the opposite was true, that a steady light made it easier for drivers to judge distance to a cyclist.
Of course, I have no idea where that idea came from, so I'm glad someone's finally doing actual research (...presumably; I didn't read the cited paper).

Eyes Roll

Automobile drivers are required by law to use headlights at night. So?

The chance of anyone driving a car or a truck without at least one of their headlights on (sure, one may go bad) is less than 0.01%.

eduskator

And it's only logical. That other study was done in front of a screen in a controlled environment. Bleh...

njkayaker

The headlight they are required to use don't illuminate everything.

Eyes Roll

They do, in fact. They may not illuminate really bright, but do just enough to see the person wearing a safety colored jacket.

Anyways, I can only take a horse to the pond, but cannot make it drink the water in the pond.

10 Wheels

Save Batteries.

terrymorse 

Is that your opinion, or is a conclusion from a study?

The one time I was hit by a car, I was wearing a lime green and reflective jacket. The driver didn't see notice me, even though I could tell he was looking in my direction. Daylight.

eduskator

Allegedly didn't see you... I wonder what he/she saw, if he/she did not see a reflective lime green thing moving. Cellphone may-be? That person probably shouldn't be driving at all.

My ex-girlfriend got hit pretty bad last summer by a SUV at an intersection where she had the right of way. SUV did not yield the incoming traffic (her and a friend). The SUV driver told the police officers she was blinded by the sun, but it was a cloudy day. Police didn't press charges against her because they didn't have enough proof.

genejockey 

I use flashing lights front and rear during daylight and dusk. I don't ride at dawn, or at night. It's uncivilized.

njkayaker

Rear lights are brighter at much longer distances. That video was rather close. Thanks for proving my point.

terrymorse 

It appeared he was looking right at me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have ridden in front of his stopped car.

After the collision, I figured he was focused on the traffic behind me and wanted to clear the intersection before the next car arrived. Target fixation.

Probably caused by inattentional blindness, as in the famous "didn't see the gorilla" experiment:





A flashing headlight might have gotten his attention.

Alan K

During the day, I always use blinking red red rear lights (often two).. They are quite bright and have multiple patterns of flashing.
On bike paths where pedestrians are frequently present, I switch to constantly on mode, which is less jarring to people who are out for a peaceful stroll.
For short stretches of streets, when I must use them, it’s all flash and the brightest setting. I don’t want to give anyone an excuse that they couldn’t see me.

I realize that ardent proponents of forcing everyone to pay attention to bicyclists will not like to hear this, the basic fact remains that a bicyclist has everything to lose in an accident with a car/truck so it’s crucial that we ride as defensively as possible in the interest of self-preservation.

Alan K

In our area, winters are long, days are short, and with this stupidity of changing the clock, we are always returning from work when it is pitch black. So uncivilized or not, if we wish to pay our bills (instead of using our welfare system where others foot our bills), I have to ride in dark. Choosing the path that isn’t busy with commuters using automobiles is the they to safety. In my case, I don’t mind adding extra 10-15 min to my bicycling time, as I avoid drivers singularly focused on making good time through running the “pink” lights (which often red as they enter the intersection).

Bob Ross

Is it time to post this again?

The Invisible Gorilla

genejockey 

Arguably, "Changing the clock" is what Daylight Savings Time is, whereas Standard Time, which is based on the sun being at its zenith at noon, is the... well, the standard.

Maelochs

I highlight this exchange because it shows what happe3ns when ego trumps science.

"Allegedly" didn't see him? Are you saying the driver saw him and deliberately hit him? That is what the words mean.Then you invent some distraction ... "Cellphone may-be?(sic)" Then you conclude the driver probably shouldn't be driving ... based on ... your desire to be "right" in an internet debate.

Here's some news ... drivers have been hitting each other, stationary items, and cyclists, pets, and pedestrians for longer than there have been cell phones. And drivers get distracted by a lot of different things. A lot of it also involves how the brain works. If we are going to go to all the effort of pretending to be smart ... let's go the final step and actually try to be smart.

Drivers do stupid things ... even good drivers. In fact, I recall a thread here where a cyclist (one of the other obnoxious excessively vocal debaters, not myself) explained that the proper way to make a right turn onto a road was to keep looking left to make sure no cars were approaching .... this Cyclist, in a thread about drivers being stupid and hitting cyclists, was suggesting driving one way while looking the other way .... and I have seen my wife do that very thing, while I was in the passenger seat .... and actually hit a cyclist, who had pulled up on our right to make a right turn. (Yes, I told her but as I said, she is my wife ... she never listens to me.)

Myself ... one day coming home from a job out of town after three days on almost no sleep, I was trying to pull out of an exit ramp onto a busy, high-speed road. There was no signal and no long break in traffic ... and my car doesn't have the 0-60 time to risk pulling out and gunning it. I kept looking as far up the road as possible for a space without a grill and headlights ... and when I saw no grill and headlights, i got ready to go ... and realized I didn't see a Car grill and headlights because a semi-trailer was coming. It reminds me about the apocryphal experiment where a frog could see a fly-sized object pass before its eyes but its brain simply didn't register a basketball rolling by.

That is how people pull out of aside streets and hit motorcycles and bikes, i think ... people look right past what they are not looking for. Our brains take in much more information than we can process ... every nerve ending in our bodies are constantly transmitting, and the brain edits everything down to a truncated version, emphasizing what experience has taught is important. That is how we can have a conversation with someone in front of us at a party and not hear what is being said all around us it is also why flashers work ... our brains decide that mostly what is in the field of vision, and is moving, is important, and our brains further focus on what has been holding out attention for some span of time ..... "avio0ding distraction" means cutting out extraneous information, but sometimes the brain gets it wrong and that information is really important.

Did that driver "see" @eduskator ? Almost certainly ... but might not have been looking at him. Maybe the driver dropped a lit cigarette, or a child in the back seat stabbed another in the throat, or the driver was tired, disgruntled, and irritable, stuck in traffic on the way home from a long day at work and not focused on driving ... and a lot of drivers (including some of us sometimes) fall into one of those categories.

I am not making excuses for bad behavior, but if we are not willing to try to analyze bad behavior, we have no business prescribing punishment for bad behavior.

And here, on the internet ... we are likely sitting somewhere comfortable, typing when and what we want, in an environment of our own choosing, not facing threats .... if we cannot think clearly here, maybe we shouldn't be driving, riding, or even let out of the house.

If hi-viz clothing is more important for cyclist safety than lights at night ... why are there no clothing laws but there are light laws? I don't know ... maybe because bike light can be seen before the car headlights hit a bike. Seems having more time to react makes more sense, eh? After all, car headlights illuminate Every cyclist, even ones wearing black .... so if we are relying on car headlights color shouldn't matter.

During the day some high-viz colors disappear and at any time could blend into a background .... I agree (pretty much common sense and also supported (I surmise) by research) that hi-viz is almost always more visible than say ... medium gray ... but I would dispute that hi-viz clothing is more important to safety than lights. Every fire truck I have ever seen has been hi-viz ... and had flashing lights.

(In fact, i recall back in my childhood when fire departments started doing actual research into what colors really are visible at different light levels .... Danger Orange and Fire-Engine Red can both turn black at dusk. That was when some safety equipment started getting painted yellow, light green, or white.) So ... no one should debate whether hi-viz clothing increase visibility ... but as we all know, and as eduskator's tale illustrates immediately ... the eyes and the brain play different roles in perception and awareness.

On top of that ... I have been following some of the online discussion about the 77-year old lady who hit a pack of cyclists in Gulf Stream FL about a week ago. A lot of people pointed out hat age can be a strong factor is driving ability... and so can medical emergencies.

As for the "study" on which the original article is based ... what weak "science." That is like measuring sexual reaction form people watching porn, or salivary reaction form people looking at pictures of food. it ain't real, and a huge amount of information is Not being transmitted. BS pseudo-science in my opinion. But ... I think all of us, as riders and drivers (most of us) or even just as passengers, have paid more attention to bikes on the road than most drivers (I know I often see cyclists even on sidewalks, or crossing unlighted across an intersection (no traffic so it is safe to cross) which my wife doesn't see. When I say it is easier to see a flashing light, besides the couple studies I have read which show this, my own experience shows me that I notice a flashing light right away ... and sometimes a solid tail light can be mistaken for a red reflector on a road side object like a mail box or guard rail (actual "been there, done that" data.)

Flashing tail lights at night are Always visible way before the headlights illuminate the riders, in my experience. Flashing headlights in the day are also very visible, but only head-on, which is sort of useless because the riders are on the other side of the road and in no danger from me. From the side, flashing daytime headlights are invisible.

As some note above ... hi-viz increases your chances, probably but not definitely, of a driver actually noticing you after he sees you .... and I would never tell a driver Not to wear it. But it ain't magic, and I am not convinced it offers me a vast improvement in safety. Even so, i try to wear light-colored jerseys at night ... because I am at least partly human and humans are only partly rational.

genejockey 

A woman cyclist was killed riding in daylight in a forested area with dappled sunlight, because a van whose driver didn't see her (because of the dappled sunlight) pulled out in front of her. Since then, I always use flashies front and rear.

datlas 

I do the same. If the front flash annoys drivers, tougho lucko.

eduskator

Allegedly
al·leg·ed·ly
/əˈlejədlē/
adverb

1. used to convey that something is claimed to be the case or have taken place, although there is no proof.

jonathanf2

I use steady if in a group ride, flashing if riding solo. Personally I find flashing a bit distracting if in a group. Also I use double lights front and rear if I know I'll be riding into the evening or on a busy road route. While driving I've actually watched cyclists with their lights on and I've counted at least 5 big city blocks of visibility. It makes a big difference both night or day. I'd even recommend using a rear light that flashes both red and white. I've even seen cyclists use blue lights which I think make drivers a bit more aware since they might think it's the police ahead of them.