Originally Posted by
Steamer
use a mirror, watch cars like a hawk, and get ready to bail if necessary.
control your speed on descents - nocturnal animals are probably a bigger danger.
choose your routes carefully, if those decisions are in your hands, that is.
I feel that steady lights are easier to track than blinking ones, although blinking lights are better at getting people's attention. Rural roads with drivers going at high speed favors the former, and urban settings with lots of light pollution require the latter.
Even more so, use your ears. You can tell a lot about how a car is being driven behind you on rural roads just by listening to it. Speed based on engine speed and wind noise, or in corners how the tyres sound can tell you a lot about how the driver is behaving. I've got off a road on more than one occasion when things did not sound right.
A flashing light does cause issues with tracking. But another issue is that many riders seem oblivious that their lights can be obscured by parts of the bike -- if mounted down on the seat stay, it can disappear behind the tyre from certain angles. Others can be obscured by a rack bag. Some end up pointing downward. And there are those that simply run low on batteries without the rider realising.
Why not a combination of one flashing light and one fixed-beam light? Redundancy is the name of the lighting game in randonneering, and switching on two lights can alleviate concerns about visibility.