You are missing...and assuming...a lot. First, the point of the post where I lost the use of all three lights was to illustrate...perhaps illuminate
...the idea of carrying backups because the unexpected happens. The lights I was using when this happened were my overvolted halogens,
not LED. The mounts were...and are...different from the o-ring mounts that most of the light systems now use. Those probably wouldn't have sheared off in the kind of crash that I had.
Secondly, the crash wasn't caused by my failure to see an object in the road. I had plenty of illumination. I could see what caused the crash quite clearly and, in fact, realized my mistake as soon as I tried to climb up and onto a snow bank before I hit the ground with a mighty smack!
While I agree that a good light system mount shouldn't be easily damage in a fall, this wasn't a fall nor even a slight crash. It was, without a doubt, the hardest I have every crashed in 30+ years of epic crashes. I hit the ice lip at between 15 and 20 mph on a tangent and didn't have time to prepare for any kind of crash...something that doesn't normally happen. I smacked the pavement hard enough that a motorist traveling in the opposite direction turned around to see if I was okay and commented that he heard me hit the ground. I had a bruise that ran from my shoulder to my wrist where my arm was trapped beneath my body and a bruise on my upper thigh that resulted in a large hematoma that still has a lingering...and painful...hematoma on my thigh 2 years later.
As for cost, it's relative. A $100 light is expensive compared to a $40 light that does the same thing. A $100 light would be cheap compared to a $1200 light. If you run multiples, like I do, 3 $40 lights are a whole lot cheaper than 3 $100 lights and vastly cheaper than 3 $1200 lights.
And, again, where is the link.
I think you are still missing something. I'm not an electronics guy. I don't know a lot about that part but, I suspect, that the light makers aren't running a single LED in the lamps. They tend to run them in multiples as far as I understand. Thus you multiply the lumen output by the number of LEDs on the circuit.
Real world...as in I've seen these lights from the saddle of a bike...the Ebay Crees are as bright as anything I've used. That includes 20W, 12V, 12 degree, MR-16 halogens run at 14.4V which are car light quality. I've dabbled in using LEDs for a number of years now and I've not been impressed. I have commented in the past that the first generation Magicshines (and the Magicshine flashlights) were a giant step backwards to the output of halogens of the late 90's and 2000's. I wasn't all that impressed. These go way beyond those lights.
Finally, there's the respect issue. Your posts to me always seem to contain a jab or an assumption that I am stupid or some other kind of insult. Why? You really need to go look up agumentum ad hominem.