Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
Mmmm. I guess what I mean is that we are against a top end on the front of lights of about 4000 lumens - or about what you would get from two car headlights on full bright. On normal, they are about 2600 lumens. After that, there is no real need to go brighter on a bike, IMO. On the rear, it's probably about 400 lumens which is an amazingly bright taillight.
After that, it gets down to the feature wars - better mounts, smaller size, programmability, wireless remotes, beamshaping, better and smaller batteries etc.... It's sort of down to the point like with cars where we had the marketing battle over cupholders a few years ago.
J.
Pretty much agree with your post. The thing that no-one really seems to agree on yet is "what actually makes a light effective?". The requirements for a front headlight are similar, but different than a car in that being conspicuous is far more critical than just lighting up the road since bicycles are smaller. Motorcycles are legally permitted headlight modulators for exactly that reason.
Tail lights have a similar situation and 'brighter' isn't necessarily the answer to more visibility. Something I'm curently experimenting with myself is painting the road behind me with high powered red LEDs. The lights are aimed at the road and so don't bother motorists, but create a much larger area of illumination for traffic to notice. Different but so far surprisingly effective.