alhedges

I know that, as a German, you've been fed a media diet which does describe the US in those terms - a country filled with McJobs, obese citizens, lots of violence, and no innovation. It's popular at home because it confirms existing prejudices (am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen, etc.pp.).

Of course it's complete nonsense. The US produces 18% of all manufactured goods globally; second behind China, with 22%. Japan has about 10%; Germany 6%.

And your examples of lack of innovation are just ridiculous. Apple overturned the existing cell phone market and has the top selling phones. It's one of the reasons MS bought Nokia. You have to be willfully blind not to see any US innovation looking at the global technology market, from Google to Facebook to Intel to Twitter to Apple to Qualcomm to...well, okay, I do have to give Germany credit for "Tiny Wings".

Having said that, I do agree about the StVO wrt bike equipment.

keyven

I don't understand - why is this an equipment problem rather than an attitude problem?

I use the Cygolite Expilion 680 and L&M Urban 550, pointed them slightly towards the ground, and they've accomplished everything they need to do without blinding anyone.

However I guess if you insist on riding fast on a completely dark path/road, it could be a different matter.

jputnam

Car headlights were essentially unregulated at first, until they got so bright, 600-700 lumens, that they caused glare issues for oncoming traffic. It then took years to regulate them and transition to shaped beams with lower glare.

Until just a few years ago, bike headlights brighter than a few hundred lumens were vanishingly rare, and the only regulatory concern in the U.S. was making sure bikes had lights at all, and that they were bright enough... a dim 2.4W incandescent could meet the minimum requirements. I'm not aware of any state that has a maximum intensity for bicycle headlights, or a requirement that they be aimed so as to avoid excessive glare.

Eventually, enough people with 5,000+ lumen retina-burners will aggravate enough of the wrong people that legislatures will move from talking to acting, and we'll get headlight regulations for bikes.

I believe it would be in the best interest of cyclists for cycling organizations to get in front of that issue and frame the conversation with adequate bicycle lighting in mind, so we don't end up with restrictions written by people who think bikes shouldn't be going faster than 10 mph anyway.

I-Like-To-Bike

Acidfast7 is no more German than Edward Snowden is. He is a U.S. passport carrying ex-pat with seldom a good word to say about his home country, at least not when he can find disparaging words to post instead. Makes him think he is more worldly I suppose.

TransitBiker

Don't you love when a car pops on the high beams right into your face? If a cyclist did that, i'd probably call the cops, citing safety concern.

- Andy

Gdogpdx

I love my 400 lumen Cygolite for many reasons but primarily because I can see the road and others CAN see me!! I ride a variety of roads, streets and trails on my commute. I noticed a better awareness of my presence when I made the upgrade. Sorry if you were temporarily inconvenienced.

cyccommute 

As ILTB pointed out, he isn't German. And he is certainly willfully blind. Computer technology is only one area where the US has lead since the end of the Space Race. Plastics, material science, metallurgy, energy science, medicine, physics, astronomy, biology, etc are all places where the US have lead in ideas and innovation since 1972. In bicycles alone, the US is a leader in innovation. Europeans didn't invent the mountain bike and the improvements that have driven the sport to the levels that it is at now.

I would suggest, however, that wanting StZVO on all bikes may not be the best course. StZVO regulations are designed for bikes traveling at 18 kph which is way slow. 12 mph (18 kph) may be a good average speed but I hit 30 or even 35 mph on my commute and would easily out run those lights.

noglider 

@acidfast7, see Alcatel Lucent, now French owned, but a great deal of innovation and engineering is here in the US, a descendent of Lucent and before that Bell Labs and AT&T. And Qualcomm. And many more. These companies design and create the industrial-level transport infrastructure that phone companies use around the world. The US is a powerhouse in this field. And this is one field. If you don't know which areas the US leads in, then it means you just don't know. It does not mean we don't lead any industries. We lead quite a few.

Manufacturing as a fraction of the economy, is very large, but that's in value now, not in number of people employed. The latter point is nothing to be proud of, but the former is. We are not a manufacturing weakling. We are an employment weakling. If you want a job here, you'll have a hard time.

Did you not know this? Well, consider yourself informed. I know you're an expert in your field, but you're not an expert in some other things, obviously. Speaking as if you're an expert and saying misinformed and uninformed things (such as asserting that not much innovation comes from the US) is very unbecoming. My advice is to speak as an expert on things you are an expert.

noglider 

Ding ding ding! It is exactly an attitude problem and not an equipment problem. With great power comes great responsibility. I get annoyed at people with underpowered lights, because I fear for them. I'm not all that afraid of running into them from not seeing them, but it does seem possible, especially if the other person is inside a motor vehicle.

It's similar to the pro-*** position. If you want to own a ***, you should damned well use it responsibly. I don't know why pro-*** people aren't pushing this message more. If they are, the media aren't picking it up adequately. The emphasis lately seems to be on the right to own. How about the responsibility of owning? Anyway, please do not respond to me on the *** issue. That would shut this thread down right fast. I'm making an analogy. A model citizen uses whatever equipment is appropriate for him and in a way that does not impinge on anyone else's goings-on.

You want an adequate, moderate light that's a no-brainer to use? Great.

You want a high power light that gives you more places to go/ability to go fast/pissing-match-points/whatever? Sure, just know how to use it well, and be considerate of others.

noglider 

And just for kicks, I want to trip the bad-word filter once more, just for the sake of it.

If you ever find that you have to accelerate hard, just *** those muscles in your legs so you can do so.

noglider 

It does appear that way, but I'd prefer to argue with the facts he presents than complain about his attitude.

noglider 

I agree. I wouldn't want to be limited by that standard, not that I know all about it. I have some StZVO-compliant lights, and I like them, but I'm not going to say everyone should have them and no one should have non-compliant lights. I do feel, though, that there's stuff to be learned from the standard.

Actually, my B&M Ikon battery light has proven to be very flawed. The rubber band that holds it on is not stable enough to keep the light pointed right. If this is compliant, it shouldn't be. I would fail it. I will see if I can rig up a better mount. Once I do that, I'll love the light again.

noglider 

I agree. I wouldn't want to be limited by that standard, not that I know all about it. I have some StZVO-compliant lights, and I like them, but I'm not going to say everyone should have them and no one should have non-compliant lights. I do feel, though, that there's stuff to be learned from the standard.

Actually, my B&M Ikon battery light has proven to be very flawed. The rubber band that holds it on is not stable enough to keep the light pointed right. If this is compliant, it shouldn't be. I would fail it. I will see if I can rig up a better mount. Once I do that, I'll love the light again.

Leisesturm

I followed about the first page of this closely and then ... not, so please, I beg your forgiveness if I run over a point of view covered in a recent post. As cyclists the actual composition of our lighting equipment is well above our pay grade. The average motorist does not question the wattage or the beam pattern of the headlights on a car that s/he is about to buy. The DOT mandates minimums of lumens and beam patterns and LEO is supposed to enforce conformity. How well does that work? If you drive at all you have been blinded by an oncoming vehicles that was one or more of the following: lifted so high its low beams were defacto high beams... ouch, running HID flamethrowers of 3,000+ lumen each(!), yowza, running headlights that hadn't been aimed since New York City was under a glacier. We've all been taught, as drivers, what to do when confronted with an inconsiderate road user with non-compliant head lighting: look away and at the fog stripe at the right hand edge of the road until you are past the offending light(s). Why do cyclists make such a big deal about other cyclists lights?! Is it because they can or do they really pose a significant hazard to public safety!?

I am surely in the minority but I am visually handicapped enough that driving, especially at night is inadvisable. My license is good for another six years and it probably will not be renewed at that time. Riding a bicycle is not a privilege for me, it is as necessary as a valid drivers license is for most of the rest of you. When I am out there in the unincorporated territory between cities in the suburban fringes of the Portland Metro I have no less than two and sometimes three MagicShines going and I still do not see as well as when driving the cheapest tier of rental car that Enterprise has in their fleet! Don't you think a cyclist, at night, needs to see at least as well as any driver? That THUMP that just ended the life of someones kitty when you are driving with 3,000 lumens but ist wasn't quite enough, could be the THUMP that ends your life when you are night cycling with 1,000+ lumens and it isn't nearly enough.

Cyclists are the only road user that regularly argue for little, less or even no self lighting at night. How ironic. The DOT will never step in and regulate bike lights so get over that. If they do intervene at all, it will likely be to mandate increases in the power of bike lighting. Some of you think nothing of spending as much on a headlight as you spent on your bike. I don't know... that just seems weird to me. I can't do it. I'm sorry. I just can't. Fancy beam patterns and cut-offs are going to make lights that cost 3x the average commuter rig. Is that practical? And then there is the issue of bike lights being in extremely vulnerable locations on the bike. It's just all too arbitrary. Until lights are built into the chassis of the bike the way car lights are nothing can be predicted as to the effect of this or that wonder headlight once its actually out in the field.

Personally I think ALL cyclists, if they are going to run "to see" lights, should have that light mounted on their helmet! You are NOT going to "dip" handlebar mounted headlights everytime you see an oncoming cyclist, but it would be a trivial maneuver to look a little to the right and the other cyclist looked a little to the left when meeting head on in the close quarters of an MUP. On the bar could be a standard blinky which I haven't seen to cause any real problems of blinding. FWIW.

H

noglider 

@Leisesturm, you have special needs. I'm fine with you running as many Magic Shines as you need, but I would advocate against that for most people, because (1) they don't need them and (2) you have to be knowledgeable and careful to use them properly.

Saying everyone should use lots of high power lighting sounds to me like saying everyone should have super puncture resistant tires. No, I want fast tires, and if it means I'll be fixing flats on the road, it's a choice I'll make. Different strokes for different folks, eh?

PaulRivers

The government mandates output maximums and beam patterns. That's why people don't worry about it, because the government does it for them.

While the United States hasn't caught up, most of the rest of the world does actually require auto-levelling headlights above a certain lumen output:

Headlamp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Internationalised ECE Regulation 48, in force in most of the world outside North America, currently specifies a limited range within which the vertical aim of the headlamps must be maintained under various vehicle load conditions; if the vehicle isn't equipped with an adaptive suspension sufficient to keep the headlamps aimed correctly regardless of load, a headlamp leveling system is required.[23] The regulation stipulates a more stringent version of this antiglare measure if the vehicle has headlamps with low beam light source(s) that produce more than 2,000 lumens – xenon bulbs and certain high-power halogens, for example. Such vehicles must be equipped with headlamp self-leveling systems that sense the vehicle's degree of squat due to cargo load and road inclination, and automatically adjust the headlamps' vertical aim to keep the beam correctly oriented without any action required by the driver.[23]

Leveling systems are not required by the North American regulations. A 2007 study, however, suggests automatic levelers on all headlamps, not just those with high-power light sources, would give drivers substantial safety benefits of better seeing and less glare.[64]

I'm very sorry to hear that. However, you seem to be arguing that somehow bikes should be putting out the kind of light needed for someone to see who's partly blind. If you're to blind to drive...you may be to blind to bike safely as well.

I own around $1,500 in several different kinds and brands of lights. And do you know what I use? A $150 light that has a shaped beam and a cutoff. You mention throwing several lights on your bike - it's not intuitive, but as someone who has tried it, throwing more poorly directed lumens at the problem doesn't help. It seems like it should - but it doesn't.

I don't use a shaped beam light for the cutoff - it's a nicety, I appreciate it, but it's not even close to the top motivation. I use it because I can see far better with a shaped beam. Again, forget the cutoff part.

You have 2 problems with your regular non-shaped light:

1. They'll have a hotspot in the beam. Your eyes will adjust to whatever the brightest light source is that they see - that's why oncoming lights are so annoying, and you can't see anything whereas within a couple seconds of them passing you can go back to being able to see the ground when there's a full moon and no clouds. The hotspot mean your eyes adjust to the hotspot, which keeps them from working nearly as good as they could without a hotspot.

2. They won't throw enough light further away. You have the same problem - it lights up the area closer to the bike more than the area further away. Your eyes adjust to the brighter light up close, and you can't see further down the road because it's not lit up enough relative how the road close to you is lit up.

These are both things that are part of why you can see better with automobile headlights than you can with cheap bike lights - because automobile headlights are shaped beams. If shaped beams were more common, they'd be cheaper and more readily available. You'd be able to go to amazon and order a light that's just like your car headlight and put it on your bike.

First you argue that cyclists need more light, then you argue that it's crazy to spend more money on having more light on your bike.

If good beam patterns and cutoffs were more common in the US, they would also end up being cheaper. My Busch and Mueller Ixon IQ which has the best cutoff I've seen, cost around $150. It's probably not enough light for your needs (you'd need to buy at least 2, one on each side of the bar) but they cost less in Europe where they're more common and sometimes required by law. They aren't $500 lights.

I've flipped my mountain bike with the light on it, and it still works fine. Light mounted above the fork crown are in an even less vulnerable position.

Nothing can be guaranteed, but that's not the same as not predicted.

Helmet lights are even worse. You cannot look in a direction without putting light there. So you look behind you? Now you hit everything in a 180 degree arc with the main beam of your light. I stopped using a helmet light for commuting because drivers next to me don't appreciate being temporarily blinded just because I need to look behind me.

no motor?

The voice of reason always pops up in these thread sooner or later, and here it is in this one. You'd understand why I use the second Magicshine on one of my routes when I'm going uphill facing a poorly aimed floodlight from the apartment across the street that's pointed right at the usually deserted bike path. The first Magicshine with the wide angle lens works great for spotting skunks off to the side of the path, but not so good when I'm riding into the floodlight.

PaulRivers

So your solution seems to be to carry your own floodlight with you so everyone coming towards you on the path gets the same effect. Ok. Guess I'll have to pull out my Seca 1400 wide beam light so I can see on the path you're on. Then you'll need to buy 2 more Magicshine's so you can keep up...

I recently had the opportunity to ride with the battery powered Phillips Saferide on a hill that always used to be a pain in the ass for lighting - you're going uphill, on a path that faces oncoming cars, the bike path is slightly below the road so you get hit with the main beam in the face and it's hard to see. My Phillips Saferide - a shaped beam with a cutoff that costs $150 and runs on AA batteries - is the first single light I've used where I could still actually seen the bike path in front of me on this stretch. Only other way I've been able to do it is with a 2 light, Seca 900 and Seca 1400 light combination.

If you have a light with a well shaped beam, you can actually both see better and don't need to spray a bunch of lumens into other people's faces. It's not like I'm saying you should ride and be unable to see.

RolandArthur

Excellent post. I really hope people will use this advice. I looked up these MagicShines and they are advertised as 1000 - 2000 lumens light output. I mostly use a flash light as bicycle light, 55 lumens without a cut-off and thus pointed at the road so other people are not bothered by it. This flash light does have a setting of just over 400 lumens, you can use it to blind people in defence/assault. Not something you would do to fellow road users I presume? Should I encounter some ... blinding me by shining 1000 Lumen in my face with his helmet lamp I would be really pissed off.

Or perhaps do the bunny thing: Aim straight for the lights

PaulRivers

:-)

I don't think anyone should have to not be able to see while biking so that others are not annoyed, but what's great about a well shaped beam is that you don't have to - you can both see in front of you very well, and also not blind oncoming traffic (on a bike trail). I personally just wish we'd see more of them. The American light manufacturers don't make them at all (despite having excellently designed automobile headlights), they're only made by European manufacturers.

RolandArthur

A new fad in Holland is lights mounted in the fork. Shaped beams, low to the ground. They don´t bother other traffic and give a really nice view off the road conditions by being so low to the ground. Not much use if you are practically blind or if you want easy to swap components. Pretty useful for the new generation ¨omafiets/moederfiets¨.

PaulRivers

Interesting...

mcrow

Yeah, I have experienced being blinded to a point of near crash before.

Some guy in a cruiser coming around a corner had an old style light in his handlebars that put off about as migh light as the brights in my car. So, I came around the corner moving pretty fast unaware of how bright his light was and then was seeing spots and almost went into some train tracks. Luckily I was able to pullover and stop just before hitting the rocks that came before the rails. Could have been a pretty nasty crash.

I tend to use the lowest light I can possibly use and still see while moving a reasonable speed.

wbuttry

All I know I ride at night and I use Cree lights mine are aimed so that the beam touches the ground 20 ft in front of my bike . we have no bike path so I ride on the road .I see people every nite that doesn't have a light one on theyre bikes. And nothing is said by the cops or anything plus no helmets .

acidfast7

Ah hah! This will soon change as I'm in the queue for a German passport and am working toward the UK passport so I jettison the US one due to tax purposes after have a child or two. The only country I've seen with more nefarious tax laws that the US are Russia. Double taxation is an issue as a US citizen at incomes over 6 digits or substantial savings.