Rick

[QUOTEHaving same setup as you do. Working great for me.][/QUOTE]


The light is good enough that motorists from a considerable distance move further away from me. I would turn it off if I was on a heavily traveled separated path so I don't annoy people.

Milton Keynes

There really shouldn't be any need for daytime lights on the bike path at all. IMO lights are so you can be noticed by drivers.

Mark Stone

I'll use a front flasher on a MUP so ppl can see me from a distance. For example, on the Bear Creek path west of Denver, there's areas where you can see a half-mile or longer down the path, and the flasher (or me seeing another's flasher) gives us a heads-up that we're approaching each other. Less surprises. 😊

livedarklions

OK, so here's where we use the math to show why that is bad. It's called the inverse square rule--every time you half the distance to the viewer, you quadruple the light hitting the viewer. If a flasher is visible at a 1/2 mile, it's 4 times as bright at a 1/4, 16 times as bright at 1/8, 64 times at 1/16, 128 times at 1/32, etc. So when you get within a few feet of the other guy, your light is going to be extremely bright and flashing, which makes it impossible for the other guy's pupils to adjust to the very bright light. So you see each other well at 1/2 mile, but up close, the guy can't really focus on you. So you're basically blinding the guy right when he's most likely to run into you so he can see you at a distance where you're irrelevant to each other.

At least turn off the flash. Solid bright light in the daytime doesn't cause the problem, and it's plenty visible for a path.

Milton Keynes

If I can see 1/2 mile down the trail, I can see other cyclists ahead. And for cases when I can't see that far ahead, it's no big deal. I'm not going so fast that I need 1/2 mile distance for reaction time.

VTBike

I have always found daytime lights on rail trails to be obnoxious. If you are going so fast that you need a light to be safe, you shouldn't be riding on a rail trail. And if you don't need the light for safety... well... turn it off.

livedarklions

Totally agree.

Even if both bikes are going 25 miles an hour in opposite directions, that's 36 seconds notice. No one needs the 1/2 mile reaction time.

And if you have the same brightness without the flash, how much closer would I have to be to notice it? Our eyes can adjust to a bright constant light, but flashing makes that impossible.

VicBC_Biker

If there are pedestrians on the rail trail, don't assume that they will see you. Earphones on (so no bell will penetrate their consciousness), head down in phone, or walking 5 abreast, or letting their dog wanter on a 20 foot lead.....
It wouldn't make any difference how slow I was going...I have come up to situations like those at 2 mph without getting a reaction.
Anything that makes them notice me is a plus.
(And that's just the people facing me. All the ones walking on the same side as me, travelling in the same direction, are a different (unsolveable) problem.)
If, as a daytime cyclist, you find a small oncoming flasher like Bontrager Ion to be obnoxious, you have missed one of the first car-driving lessons I got from my father: "Approaching car at night with high beams - Don't stare at the lights; look at the road shoulder or lane marking on your side and just drive."

livedarklions

You mean the 1500 lumen Bontrager Ion?

Ok, so here's why that last bit of advice is stupid--a path is not a road, so when we pass each other in opposite directions, your stupid blinky light is actually filling the entire scope of my forward vision--we're just a few feet apart, for crying out loud.. I've been in a situation where a father's stupid blinky light actually made it impossible for me to know that his small son was riding his own bike right next to him.

And by the way, nice deflection, but your father was giving you advice on how to cope with another driver doing something stupid and illegal--misusing the high-beams. Bright blinky lights on the path are being made illegal in a growing number of places with good reason--they're not just obnoxious, they're actually a safety hazard.

Basically, anyone who is strobing a bright light on a MUP is acting like a jerk, and stupidly making themselves and everyone else LESS safe. You've just posted that anyone bothered by this just has to cope with your absurdly inconsiderate behavior by forcibly having to stop looking ahead of themselves on a relatively narrow path that could have all sorts of traffic of varying speeds on it directly ahead of you.

Turn off the blinking, is that really so hard? No one has been able to refute that the blinking makes it impossible for the pupils to adjust, which is the real issue with the flashing.

njkayaker

It's like you don't even read what you are replying to.

How ever do you get "1500 lumen" from "a small oncoming flasher"?

https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...olorCode=black
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...olorCode=black
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...olorCode=black

VicBC_Biker

NO, I mean the 100 Lumen Bontrager Ion:
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...light/p/14243/

It's a cube about 2.5 cm (1") square.
I have parked my bike with the flasher on and walked right up to it, and it certainly didn't blind me.
Perhaps we are talking about different sorts of 'rail trails' or MUPs?
The ones around my area have road crossings with car/truck traffic at short intervals, and also re-join busy roads so one is driving with car traffic again, sometimes after only a few minutes on the 'rail trail'.
Fear of being run down by a car or truck (or now, a speeding e-motorcycle aka 'e-bike' on a bike path) keeps many people from cycling. If small using daytime flashers helps to avoid accidents, and gets people exercising on bikes, I think that is a good thing.

Paul Barnard

No it's not.

If your light is such that other riders have to look at the side of the path, you are cheating them out of their situational awareness.

A smart coach would have implored you to slow as well.

VicBC_Biker

Don't stare at the sun.
Don't stare at headlights.

livedarklions

First Bontrager Ion I googled was this:
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...light/p/22466/

1500 Lumen

Anyway, your post that first mentioned it was all about warning pedestrians on paths, not cars. Now it's about cars. Turn the flashing off unless you're approaching an intersection, problem solved. Weird that you're saying it isn't a problem after talking about high-beams, makes me think your second post is a complete backpedal from your first.

Honestly, I probably wouldn't be commenting on this at all if all the DLRs were 100 lumens or less, but I'm not exactly sure how bright that is. The lights that really bother me are a lot brighter than that, and I encounter them on the paths a lot.

And no, I don't want to encourage someone who would ride a bike in a manner that endangers other riders to ride more, so I'd guess you'd have to put a pretty clear limit on what constitutes "small" before I'd agree to that.

Rick

I have not seen a daylight visibility taillight that would blind me during the day. All these diode lights run off of watts. Throwing a lumens number at them is inaccurate. Realistically the manufacturers should tell us the watts they run on. I asked Dinotte about how many lumens my taillight put out and they stated between 600 and 800. I haven't rode in a bike lane, MUP, or rail path etc in decades. A pot bellied pig on a retractable line made it clear to me that public paths weren't my thing.

livedarklions

Taillights are never the problem on a path. It's the damn "see from a mile away" headlights.

Rick

Almost all of the powerful bicycle lights are flood lights. That can be hard on ones eyes. I drove tractor trailer for some time and the Police lights constantly on around road construction made life more difficult.