Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - rear light settings

Hi all,

So my question is: given 2 or more rear lights 1 significantly brighter than the others, which one(s) should you have blinking and which ones should you have steady?

My theory is if you have the bright one blinking it is more attention grabbing, and the less bright ones can be used by drivers to guage distance to you. Is this theory correct?

Or should you just go with 2 lights of the same brightness (although in the case of dinottes this is quite expensive!)?

Thanks

Daven

I would say it depends on the conditions. I personally have two PB flashers and usually run them both on steady, like a car. I figure people are used to not running into cars so looking like one is a good thing. Although, thinking about that, a car's tail lights are placed much further apart which could cause a driver to think I am a car further away causing an accident. Enter pedal reflectors, they denote bicycle. If I had one light brighter than the other, it would be the one that flashes just because if I put a frog light flashing next to my PB flasher on steady, it would be like a strobe light next to the sun, you will never see it.
And that, is my 2 cents.

How much brighter is the other light? Is it at all visible or does the brighter light washout the dimmer one? If it washes out, then you are just wasting batteries running it. My dinotte washes out my cateye LD600, so I just leave it off and save it for a back up.

If it is visible, I think I would run the dimmer of the two in flash mode. This would make the dimmer light at least somewhat more attention getting. I know some, if not most, may disagree with me.

I figure people are used to not running into cars

You'd be suprised. Around here, drivers don't start slowing down for traffic until they're right up behind the car in front of them (since there's really not any traffic jams to speak of in my area)

Personally, I run everything on flashing to differentiate myself from cars, since it's more visible and nobody will expect a car to be driving 15mph on a road with a 45mph speed limit.

2 lights here, dinotte on flashing (mode depending on where I am and estimate batt life) and a pbsf on blink, strictly as a back up. It is washed completely out. A dinotte on blinking is about as attention getting as one can get IMO.

hmm well I was thinking about getting a dinotte rear light and I currently have 2 blackburn 3.0 lights. I guess the dinotte on flashing or on steady would wash the others out. I guess they will just have to be backup ones then!

hmm well I was thinking about getting a dinotte rear light and I currently have 2 blackburn 3.0 lights. I guess the dinotte on flashing or on steady would wash the others out. I guess they will just have to be backup ones then!

That is probably a good idea, but why keep two backups? Why carry around two extra sets of batteries that are not being used? One is more than enough for peace of mind.