I'm going to ignore the rest of your post and concentrate on the accuracy of your statement

Let's assume that a car light has an area of about the same as a 2"x4" reflector. It doesn't and a 2"x4" reflector is larger than anything I've ever seen incorporated into a light but, for sake of discussion, let's assume they are equal. A car lamp puts out 1500 lm and a 2"x4" are is 0.005 sq meters. The lux, a measure of lumens per unit area, of the car lamp is 300,000 lux at the lamp face. Using the inverse square rule, the intensity of the light at 25 feet is 480 lux or 480 lm/sq m. The amount of light hitting the reflector is 2.4lm. If the reflector is hit dead on and we assume that 100% of the light that hits the reflector is sent back...not a valid assumption but I'll give it to you anyway...the amount of light that gets back to the observer is 0.0038 lm. Even if the reflector was a square meter in area, the total lux getting back to the observer is only 0.76.

Now to the bike light. A bike light has an aperture of about 1" or about 0.0005 sq m. Let's look at two different light outputs, 300 lumen and 600 lumen. At 300 lumens, the lux at the light is 600,000 lux. At 600 lm, the lux at the light is 1.2 million lux. Again applying the inverse square law, an observer at 25 feet would see 1920 lux. Last time I checked, 0.79 lux is less intense than 1920 lux.

The values above for the light returned would be even lower if you hit the reflector at any angle other then dead on.

So you see, your statement that "NO BICYCLE LIGHT overwhelms the light from a reflector is not accurate. Not accurate at all.