Originally Posted by
dynodonn
It depends on how many lumens the headlight can produce and how it's aimed. Extremely low lumen lights, under 50, are tolerable at night, I had been temporarily blinded once by a cyclist with a poorly aimed dual head light setup, in the 600 to 1000 lumen range, with both headlights in the strobe mode. The cyclist was definitely not on the top of my most favorable list.
I think of the whole thread, this first response was the best.
I live in Minneapolis, where I see quite a few bikes on the street when I ride.
For rear lights, I really do like the blinkies. I find the constant quick blinking patterns on the regular $15-$30 tail lights the best. They identify a bike as a bike, without being obnoxious. I'm not a fan of the exotic blinking patterns, but they aren't that bad either.
For front lights, like the guy I quoted said the low powered front lights on blink mode are great, and don't cause me any issues with being blinded or anything while I'm in my car. The blinking mode on a low powered light makes it easy to identify the light as belonging to a bike rather than a car.
For high powered front lights I usually find blinking mode obnoxious for 2 reasons -
1. It can be blinding
2. When I'm the person on the bike, it makes it difficult for me to see anything myself because my light keeps turning on/off/on/off/etc. If I need a high powered light, putting that light on strobe rather defeats the point of having the light.
The absolute most obnoxious thing I've seen is a high powered light, blinking, on the MUP. At least on the street oncoming cars are a lane over from you. On the MUP no there's need for that, and it's really really blinding. Can't imagine how annoying a blinking high powered helmet light would be.