Just to put spending $400 on a bike light in perspective consider my situation. Although I have a nice Vistalite setup with 10W and 15W lights, I got tired of charging the battery every day. For a few months I had been riding with a little 3 LED headlight, not the nice bright Cateye 3-LED bike light; this is a light you wear on your head primarily for close work. It will sort of light the area immediately in front of your wheel and seemed brighter to me than the 2.5W Cateye Micro Halogen. Since most of my early morning commute is reasonably well lighted by street lights, and I pretty much know where all the bumps are now, I figured the little light was adequate.

The morning after Labor Day I was on my usual early morning commute in the dark I hit a fresh diesel spill that I didn't see in time and went down hard right on the point of my left hip. I wound up with such a huge hematoma it required surgery to clean and drain, but not before I passed out once from the loss of 1 to 2 pints of blood into it. Even just my share of all the hospital, doctor, xray, lab, anaesthesia, etc., after insurance cost more than $400, not to mention that I couldn't ride my bike for over 3 weeks! Considering that it wouldn't have taken much more pressure to actually have broken the hip bone, requiring several months of rehab, I consider myself very lucky.
FWIW,
Raymond