JohnJ80

This all strikes me as huge conjecture that this is even a problem. We certainly don't need to go around creating laws and regulations for problems that the general public does not even perceive as a problem. Just be perceptive, and as you would with your car lights, dim them when someone is coming within a range where it might be bright and aim them properly. There is a big difference between being irritating and having a safety issue.

That all said, the vast - VAST - majority of bike lights are not even as bright as a standard car headlight. Just now we are starting to see bike lights that are in the same range (i.e. 1300 lumens or so). Given that a car has two, we're a long way from a problem.

So, then there is the argument that "car lights have shaped beams" - true for the current crop of cars but not so much for older cars with incandescent lighting. Even then, on my European car with it's "shaped" beams, its pretty much a dose of serious bright (much brighter than my bike lights - and I have some seriously bright bike lights) in the eyes if you look at the lights directly or are in their path. Even so, we are not seeing "bright oncoming lights" as a major source of traffic accidents. I even successfully drove 50 miles yesterday in my car, at night, with oncoming traffic on two lane roads (imagine that!). Phew!

We aren't hearing about crashes in the wake of cyclists with bright lights. We aren't hearing any great clamor for regulation on bike lights by pedestrians. Until this becomes a problem, I suggest there are much more important issues to resolve - like training pedestrians and cyclists on MUP paths how to behave or driver education programs to teach them how to deal with cyclists on the roads. Or even more importantly, training that teaches cyclists how to behave on the roads.

J.

cyccommute 

I agree completely but I expect you'll get the same responses I've gotten. Bicyclists, for some reason, are convinced that we are going to blind drivers and cause them to crash into us with their eyeballs burned out of their sockets and their cars completely out of control. So we should only use lights that aren't brighter than a candle. It's like people on bikes have never really looked at where their light is going on the road nor do they seem to understand optics and light intensity.

no motor?

You might be on to something there, please report your findings after riding uphill into the light emanating from a floodlight (as in a light bright enough to light up a large section of a parking lot) with your light. I can tell you a wide angle lens on a Magicshine (which doesn't annoy many oncoming riders or pedestrians) won't put out enough light in the right spots to let me see then. You'll get extra bonus points if you can try your test when there's a car exiting the parking lot - the auto lights usually shine directly into my eyes then too. I'd love to be able to "seen" the path as you put it then, especially if I could use my old AA batteries again.

PaulRivers

If I run into the situation again I'll try to remember to write back. The Phillips Saferide is the first light I've used that is actually bright enough to handle those situations. This is what I'm saying about a shaped beam - it just works better for you, then also happens to be nicer for oncoming traffic.

I've used the Phillips Saferide (the v1.2 model I got off of ) next to my Light and Motion Seca 1400 - a very bright and expensive light. It puts out the same amount of light where it hits, it just hits a smaller area. The Seca 1400 is an extremely wide beam, hitting treetops and everywhere, the Phillips just hits a wide swatch of the road (covers more than the width of a typical bike trail). It's "throw" is just as far to.

The...drawback of the Phillips is that it has less-than stellar battery management. You'd want to buy a new AA rechargeables for sure, not use old ones. The older model has a hard cutoff at 1.5 hours where it drops from high output to low, and you cannot chance it back without removing the batteries from the light. The new model lets you hit the button to switch back to high mode, but I'm testing it right now and it's having some issues with in-light charging of my maha 2700mah high capacity batteries (though there's a chance there's a problem with the batteries themselves, we'll see as I look into it further).

So...I don't have a 100% easy recommendation for you. If it wasn't for the battery annoyances, the Phillips is a really great light though. If a well shaped beam pattern was more common, one could just choose from several lights.

I'll be making a thread soonish on battery runtimes of the Phillips Saferide vs the Ixon IQ Premium. The Phillips is brighter and has a better led color temperature, but the Ixon IQ Premium is far, far better for battery life. Both take AA's, and have in-light battery charging, and both have a highly shaped beam.

mstraus

I, for one, can't avoid the problem if I want to commute by bike. I have part of my commute where the only way to go is freeway (no bikes allowed) or MUP. The area between is either water or mountains that don't have navigable roads all the way across). Maybe on a mountain bike I could ride the fire roads, but it would take hours and they may even be "closed" at night.

I think shaped beams with a cut off help, but don't fix everything. Part of it is user responsibility. Turn your lights down to the lowest level you can see safely on a MUP, keep it angled down appropriately, and if you're really nice, use your hand to shield it from oncoming riders/peds. Also, don't use blinking lights in the dark on a MUP...its just not needed!

As for any idea of riding without lights, I wouldn't do that on my MUP. Its to dark and its also the only way I can see peds or cyclists without lights, particularly if they have any reflective material on them. most peds on this path will have a flashlight or some sort of light for visibility, but not all.

noglider 

@PaulRivers, thank you for weighing in. You're very informed and informative. Your opinions seem very well considered.

I believe that one doesn't need as good vision for cycling safely as for driving safely. Thank goodness for @Leisesturm and others for that fact. I knew a guy who was legally blind who got around just fine on a bicycle.

My favorite point of yours is that the cutoff is an incidental benefit of shaped beams, that the most direct benefit is being able to see better. Wow, tastes great, less filling.

PatrickGSR94

I use a Cygolite ExpiliOn 700 that is plenty bright for me to see at night. It's a circular beam with a brighter area in the middle. That brighter area is aimed towards the road so I can see it better. I use it on full on 100% bright daytime flash mode in daylight out on roads, so cars notice me. Any time at night I put the light on steady so I can see the road.

IMHO it's extremely rude to have a super bright light on flash mode, at any time of day or night, on any sort of path where there is no motor traffic, and lots of peds. On a path in daylight, I turn my lights completely off (rear lights sometimes stay on if I forget, but front light always off). At night if I'm on a path, the front light I will set to just bright enough to see the path and whatever is on it, given whatever speed I'm going.

JohnJ80

I certainly have nothing against beam shaping and consider it to be the next big thing in LED lighting now that we are approaching the end game in lumen wars. I like some of the things light and motion has done with their TAZ series of lights. Increasing the lux numbers (i.e. "photon density") so that the lumens produced are where you want them is a good thing. The problem is that different applications need the lumens in different places.

That said, I think having standards for required beam shaping would be a mess and would create just as many problems at it would allegedly solve. For one, the riding of bikes that need lighting does not only happen on a bike trail. For instance, having a beam that does illuminate the path ahead and above is quite valuable to mountain bikers on the trail at night. They need to be able to see branch coming at them and they need to understand the sharp bend at the bottom of the downhill that they might not see as well. The bike light market is a tiny, tiny, TINY artifact of the overall lighting industry and if we require standards on lights for beam shaping, that's all you'll see produced and that's all that will be available thereby losing what is needed in other applications.

Also, if you properly aim your light, and you think about a plane (the path/road) that intersects a cone (the light beam), you can figure out how to get your beam on the road and not in the eyes of oncoming traffic/pedestrians/wild life/whatever. It's not that hard and this is just not a big problem. Almost all of it will be solved by proper use rather than regulation. I'd also submit that if you regulate you still won't solve the problem. There will still be some idiot (actually quite a few) out there that will find a way to screw this up. You have to look no further than the cyclist (who also has a -shudder- driver's license) who insists upon salmoning their way up the road. If they an get that wrong, just imagine how they could misapply a bike light.

So given that there are a few diehard beam shaping regulators in these forums and that I have never, ever heard this mentioned anywhere else, I'm not thinking that this is really going to ever go anywhere. Now in the EU, where they have made an industry out of regulating (it's a job creation program in it's own right), that may be another story.

J.

JohnJ80

You know, those pedestrians, cyclists and drivers with whom I have come into contact with my lights and with whom I have interacted have all said something to the effect of "nice lights!". Drivers and pedestrians are grateful they can see me. Other cyclists realize I've solved a problem they would like to solve. So I'm not only not seeing the critical response everyone is worried about, and I'm seeing and experiencing quite the opposite.

On the roads, we have many orders of magnitude more vehicles with at least one order of magnitude (and nearly two in many cases) more light coming from them and millions of drivers seem to get along just fine. Driver training = don' t stare at oncoming vehicles lights. I'm not sure why that doesn't work on bike paths or with cyclists. Works fine for me when I'm riding and an oncoming cyclist has a bright light.


J.

PaulRivers

Thanks, yours as well.

I try to comment on mostly on things that I have tried myself. I try to avoid anything that has to much speculation about something I haven't actually used. :-)

Fair enough. If I was legally blind and my options were to annoy other people or to not be able to get around, I'd probably choose annoying other people as well. But there's a difference between a "I don't really have a better choice" vs declaring that it's no problem for anyone.

That's why I think it's silly to invest to much into a debate of a cutoff for lights getting into people's eyes - I know for me it's a nicety that there's a cutoff, but it's not even in the top 2 reasons. Biggest reason is just that it works far better as a light.

noglider 

I think it's possible for a sight-impaired person to ride without annoying people with his lights. @Leisesturm is already ahead of the game because this is a topic he thinks about. That alone means he's more likely to be a good citizen than the average jerk.

PaulRivers

The German standards, I believe, just specify things like the amount of light above the horizon. All developped countries have automobile headlights standards - they seem to work pretty well. That being said it would be nice to have different standards for a "road" and not exclude "mountain" biking lights or anything. Whether a "standard" is required legally is a different debate altogether, but in the US the Taz is the only light made by a company here (you can order the Phillips Saferide or Ixon IQ Premium but they come from European companies) that even tries. If there was a standard that defined a road light, but didn't require it, and people know about it I feel like you'd see a lot more.

Right.

Couldn't disagree with you more. Out of the eyes of cars? Sure, no problem, the car is in a whole 'nother lane, has lights of it's own, etc. You have to have a really really really wide beam and bright light to bother cars.

Pedestrians and other people on a narrow path? It's almost impossible without a shaped beam. Here's a pic off the internet:



It's nearly impossible to avoid hitting someone in the eyes with a round beam when they're only 3 feet left of where you pass through. A car? A car would easily be travelling outside of the main beam. A bike, pedestrian, those people are walking right where you need to go through. If you point your light down to much to keep it from hitting them in the face, your doesn't doesn't have enough throw to light up further down the trail. That's what a cutoff does - let's you aim the bright part of the beam down the trail without it getting into people's faces. I'm not saying that's always necessary, but it is nice.

Lol, why you don't let all those people who turn without using their turn signal know about that...

That's totally true, a shaped beam light only works right if it's aimed properly. You aim it to high, you have the same or a worse problem.

Think what you want, it's something they've already done with cars in the US, and something they mandate in some places in Europe. I dunno if it will go anywhere or not, but they probably said the same thing about car headlights in the 60's.

PaulRivers

Ok, but ancedotally, when I rode with my wide beam Seca 1400 on the trail, people cleared off the trail in front of me and several people yelled at me.

But I rode with my measly Dinotte 200l over half the bikers would shield their eyes when coming towards me.

Riding on the road is not the same thing as riding on a trail. It doesn't matter nearly as much on the road, for a variety of reasons.

Well clearly they didn't think "don't stare at oncoming lights" worked for drivers either, or modern cars would all be round beam headlights and they wouldn't have invested in regulations and designed shaped lights for cars.

I didn't see the OP complaining about all wide beam lights, just the few but consistent ones that are way way over the top. Heck, I've been the guy riding with those a couple of times until I realized they were so absurd.

Those bright blinking lights though...ugh. They're way worse than a little side spill. It's just something about the brain, they drive me nuts. (I don't mean the lower powered AA kind, but a few people seem to have really obnoxious ones).

Leisesturm

Because my wife is totally blind and I am partially sighted, I know a lot more than the average person about vision issues. I have never had corrected vision better than 20/35. My state restricts your license at 20/63. I was 20/70 when I last had to test with the DMV. Now I am around 20/80. I am a better driver with 20/80 than most people are with 20/20! Attitude counts for far more than visual acuity I assure you. I may not be able to read the license plate of a car I am following, but at least I know he is there and act like I do. I can sense stopped traffic 1/4 mile ahead and begin slowing down long before other drivers around me are aware that there is a problem. They go speeding ahead and when they realize what I had realized several car lengths ago they start whaling on the brakes to slow down. Mostly they do stop in time, albeit in a less controlled manner than yours truly. Sometimes not, they call that a chain reaction collision.

Legally blind begins at 20/200. I am around 20/400 uncorrected. I wouldn't dream of driving a car without my glasses on, but I know personally of people with 20/400 that have driven themselves places when they (thought they) didn't have any choice! The annoying driver leaving 3 car lengths up ahead might be hypermiling, or he might be legally blind! Riding a bicycle can be done safely enough with the same visual acuity that makes for safe driving i.e. a lot worse than most states think. A drivers potential to do harm to others exceeds that of a cyclist by orders of magnitude. That is why, at present, the DMV's don't restrict bicycle privileges with decreased vision.

Anyway, enough, the topic is lights. At night I am legally blind. but only to the sides. Most cars put out plenty of light for me to see ahead! The real problem is that only the highest of the high end cars have cornering lights and urban driving has plenty of those durn corners. Frame and bar mounted lights are similarly limiting. Putting a light on my helmet was the greatest thing I ever did. I wish I could do that when driving! Maybe NYC is different because more of the cyclists have high net worth's and are commuting by bike because they can, but in Portland suburbs the cyclists are poor and in the city they are hipster (lol, don't jump all over me middle class Portland cyclists) headlight intensity if anything is too low. Again, cyclists are the only road users that self-limit themselves to dangerously low levels of light and feel good about it. The MagicShine 1000 lumen (450 lumen actual) copy of the Lupine Tesla has become the darling of the flamethrower set. If you take a look at the Lupine and MiagicShine websites you will see light heads that are three, count 'em, three, MagicShine's in one housing!!! No one is rocking these in North America, but that would be about the output of the average car headlamp on low beam.

A standard MagicShine is 1/3 of an automobile low beam but cyclists and non-cyclists alike go mad about the insane output and "car headlight" intensity... as if that were true... as if that were a bad thing were it true... the normal car has TWO 1500 (actual) lumen headlamps and MagicShine equipped riders have 1/6 of that and the Phillips Saferide set have way less... ... its mainly because so few cyclists venture out in the rain or after dark that there aren't more squishings and other horrible fates befalling the underlit. Who am I though... if you don't think you are worth a MagicShine, who am I. But .... why get exercised about close passers? Why bother "take the lane"? Why the advocacy for barrier protected bike lanes? Either you is or you ain't worth preserving, and if you is, then you is worth preserving anytime you are on the road, night time included. JMO.

H

JohnJ80

It doesn't matter. There are many times in the course of driving a car in the space of a single mile of driving in traffic, where a car's 3000 lumens of light is shined into the eyes or view of oncoming traffic, at cross streets, when turning into traffic, etc... It's fine and it is not a problem and it is not significantly different. It's just that we're all used to it. Pedestrians on MUPs or cars on roads with cycles are just now starting to routinely see cycles that are lit with lights that are even an order of magnitude less than automobiles.

I think Leisesturm made the case for this not being absurd.

I'm not sure one needs blinkie headlights at night, I don't but I could see where this could really matter in a very urban environment.

There is a BIG difference between being annoying and being unsafe and they aren't even related in many cases. Or at least, many times annoying IS safe (emergency vehicle lights and siren, for instance). It's just what people are used to.

Now, is it appropriate to dim one's lights when one approaches a pedestrian? Sure but only providing that it is safe to do so. If there are unclear obstacles or pavement defects, then the lights should still be bright. It's analogous to the times (for example) when driving a car when one sees or believes a pedestrian is on an unlit shoulder and one puts their lights on bright to make sure the pedestrian is seen. Is it annoying to the pedestrian? Probably. But who cares? I'd (correctly) rather annoy that pedestrian than hit them.

So the real solution here is to let the application determine the need for beam shaping and to let consumers vote with their wallets. Exercising a little sensitivity - as is done on the highway with cars - in dimming lights solves this really nonexistent problem. Show me when it becomes front page news that cyclists with bright lights have become a serious problem for pedestrians and people are up in arms about it. Then we can worry about this. Until we even get close to any public worry about this issue, then it's just a solution looking for a problem.

J.

PaulRivers

I don't think this is going to go anywhere further - you'll keep making excuses, I'll keep pointing out that every developed country regulates the beam pattern of their cars. You haven't made any refutation of this, just claimed that they're spending money on regulations and headlight design for no reason at all. That seems to be your opinion.


Fyi though, commonly available bike lights for $100 produce the same lumen output as 1 car headlight from the 80's -


The first US halogen headlamp bulb, introduced in 1983, was the HB1/9004. It is a 12.8-volt, transverse dual-filament design that produces 700 lumens on low beam and 1200 lumens on high beam.


If I remember right, I think they were already regulating beam shape, though I'm not 100% sure.



I don't think so. He makes a case for someone who has serious night vision problems needing to do it, but that person I think would also be just as well served by a high powered shaped beam.



A low powered blinky at night is useful in standing out as bike a human being in see of lights. If you live in the city, a lot of times you don't even need a "to see by" light because streetlights and ambient light are enough to see around. People get blinkies to be the most visible as a bike.


When they get onto bike paths that aren't lit like the streets are, and they're using something overpowered that's also the only light source around other than your own light, they're insanely annoying though.



Your post just circles around on itself - you can't talk about being annoyed because there aren't front page articles about other people being annoyed. You're trying to create a chicken and the egg situation - you can't complain unless other people are already complaining. Well - to bad, it's a free country, that means you can complain about whatever you want.

Here in the US there is no "let the market decide with their wallets" because it's difficult to get a shaped beam light. I've never seen one in a bike shop. You can buy the Phillips Saferide on amazon, but its' the older model. To get the Ixon IQ you have to know to order it through Peter White (or another online distributer who always just orders it from Peter White anyways).

I'd love to see the government come up with a term to describe bike lights that meet certain regulations, like they do with other products like "organic" or how they do crash testing and publish their results but don't force anyone to meet any standards. If people could buy a bike light that met certain standards like a car headlight does, I think people would hear about them more and more companies would make and sell them.

I'm torn on whether "let the market decide" would work or not. On the one hand, I do think a shaped beam is just plain better for riding for reasons of lighting up the road better. On the other hand, "let the market decide" works very badly for situations where the pain your product is causing is felt by other people and not you (pollution, vegas casino signs).

bubbagrannygear

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

(Emily Dickenson was a big proponent of shaped beams)

JohnJ80

Good one. Great passive aggressive comment. Classic Minnesotan (I'm also in Minnesota).

No way to prove this since the bike light market is so tiny and there just are no surveys. That said, the vast majority of riders with lights don't have much of a light on their bike. The popular light around the U, for example, seems to be the little white Blackburn Fleas or equivalent. Routinely when I'm down there, I'm amazed at the number of difficult cyclists to see even with their tiny lights in a (relatively) lit urban setting. At any rate, I don't see too many bike lights that are even anywhere near giving me cause to cover my eyes or blind me. Seriously - where are the outraged citizens? Where is a recurring theme in the paper (where is it ever in the paper)? It's not because it's just not a problem and no one even thinks it's a problem. Wishing it is a problem does not make it so.

You've missed the point. Unless you buy an expensive car with steering aimed lights, the shaped bulbs are fixed to the car. So, if a car comes in off a road at an angle or on a grade - and it happens all they time where the full and bright part of the beam is aimed at drivers eyes in the opposite lane. No one crashes. No one screams in pain. No tickets are issued. No one even remembers it since it's just part of driving at night. One would believe, based on what you've said, that this would be some sort of egregious, dangerous and painful thing. It's not. Happens all the time and no one cares - it's part of driving. This would be the analogy to your sidewalk issue - and there are typically a LOT more lumens involved. Not 100, not 500, but closer to 3000. Again, not a problem and this is not an issue.

LOL. The annoying thing is not the lack of articles! Although I'm betting you do find that annoying. It's that there is no one talking about dangerously bright or annoying bike lights because, well, they aren't annoying and it's not a big deal.

And right back at you. Trying to make it a problem doesn't make it a problem. Trying to convince everyone that we must, must regulate beam shape and we must have the perfect beam because we have a Big Problem does not make it a big problem. Show the evidence that anyone - ANYONE - has been harmed by a bright bike light. Who got hurt? Lawsuit? What? Then do a quick search for accidents and injuries from cyclists not being visible enough at night - look at that carnage. It's obvious, but it's not hard to find references that show that injuries are much more likely in the event of cyclists not being visible enough than too visible (or too bright). I'd also posit that means the same for pedestrians. Perhaps cyclists light them up in an annoying fashion, but they wind up hitting them less because they can see them. Again, annoying does not mean unsafe.

FWIW, the only really reliable place to find discussions about bike lights being too bright is on, wait for it, bicycle forums. At least in the quick search I did.

Pretty simple. No demand because there is no perceived need because there is no problem - that's the great part about markets and their efficiency. When (more likely if) it becomes a problem, then you'll have plenty of choices in a big hurry because the opportunities for innovation are becoming more limited as everyone catches up in lumens. The batteries were one possible chance for this - I do agree you can get more lux per watt-hour on the road (or where ever you want it) with a shaped beam for your particular application. But as the LEDs become more efficient, this becomes less of an issue.

Please, no! The government wastes enough on unproductive pursuits. This is one of those. Now that you mention it, it's probably just right into some regulator's wheel house for that precise reason.

But don't hold your breath. I'd be surprised if they even sell 1 million bike lights a year in the US. The number of very bright bike lights (1000W and larger) has got to be pretty dang tiny in a sea of 300 million people. I think we have plenty of other problems that matter a whole hell of a lot more than this. Just look back at how big of an issue it was to get helmet standards (never mind that they turned out to be counter productive and a drag on innovation in the industry). That's a far bigger issue than lights and it was a big deal to get that done. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not thinking this is going to get anyone's attention for at least the next 50 years or so. But I'll leave that to you.

And that's where we fundamentally disagree. It's not pain, it's annoyance and it's just not a big deal. If a significantly large portion of the population were pained by this, then there would be demands to do something about it. But they aren't pained, no one is injured, and it is not going to happen. The examples you cite are good examples. Pollution happens by others, significant portions of the population are injured/alarmed, and changes are made. That's the piece you are missing here. No one is getting injured and it's not a problem.

jputnam

Actually, it's one of the busiest consumer complaint dockets at the NHTSA and has been for decades, causes enough accidents that it's a standard data field on crash reporting, drives millions of dollars of ongoing research on headlight glare countermeasures for cars, and is a leading reason for senior drivers giving up driving at night.

Bicycle headlights haven't risen to nearly the same level of complaints, probably because kilolumen lights are still quite new and the installed base in most of the country is quite small. But it is an issue that makes the news in cities with high winter cycling populations.

jputnam

I first became aware of the issue receiving constituent complaints. It's a real issue, just not a very wide-spread one at this point.

If we wait for voter complaints to drive the issue, we may end up with ridiculously nitpicky regulations. But that's hardly necessary if cyclists get ahead of the issue.

Cars have had shaped beams since the 1930s, they've been mandatory since 1940, at a time when car headlights were under 500 lumens. But even before that, there were laws about headlight aim.

The idea that's had the most support with legislators with whom I've discussed it is simply extending the regulation used for old single-beam car headlights:

"(1) The head lamps shall be so aimed that when the vehicle is not loaded none of the high intensity portion of the light shall at a distance of twenty-five feet ahead project higher than a level of five inches below the level of the center of the lamp from which it comes, and in no case higher than forty-two inches above the level on which the vehicle stands at a distance of seventy-five feet ahead;"

No beam pattern regulation required, simply a requirement that none of the high intensity light be aimed up into the eyes of oncoming traffic, with a simple measure that anyone can verify at home. It's a rule that most cyclists already follow out of common sense, but of course most laws codify rules that most people would obey without the law -- most laws are for reining in outliers.

Of course, such a regulation would have the effect of strongly encouraging shaped beams, since you have to aim a round beam much lower than a beam with a top cutoff to meet the same standard.

jputnam

Decades ago, dropout mounts were available for the old 2.4W incandescent headlights. Mounting the headlight at axle height throws the road surface into more relief. I had one for a big chromed Union with a tire-dragging generator.

Back in the 1970s, shaped headlight beams were very common on bicycle lights in the U.S., not because of glare, but because the lights were so dim it was important to put as much of it on the road as possible.

klmmicro

Might as well regulate this...hell, politicians need something to justify their existence. Bike registration? Light pattern and intensity regulation? Wht the hell people? Is there any place left where people live without having some benevolent law maker telling them exactly what they can and cannot do?

I will ignore any bone headed regs as the issue has no basis for any equipment on my bikes. I have cycled a lot in the darkened hours and there are hundreds of nighttime cyclists that ride in my area. Yet to see a single issue with any light being "too bright". Would say that any "voter" or constituent that whines about this is simply pissed off at cyclists in general. It is kind of tiring to have every aspect of life regulated because somebody might be upset or offended.

JohnJ80

that's just about the understatement of the year. Let's table this discussion and see if it's a problem in 10 years or so.

This is high on the list of issues for your constituents? Seriously?



J.

jputnam

No, that's not practical, but it's also nonsensical. Shaped beams add very little cost.

For example, Cateye makes two versions of many of its headlights, a flashlight-pattern model for the U.S., and a shaped beam for Japan and Europe. The difference in price is less than $5, but Cateye doesn't distribute the lenticular-lens version in the U.S. because they don't want to confuse dealers with too many options.

Many of the Chinese manufacturers that sell flashlight-style lights to U.S. buyers offer lenticular lens versions for only a few dollars more.

Leisesturm

Be still, my heart. I think I've seen song lyrics in a thread or three, but I don't think I've ever seen literary poetry before. Well done, sir.