I was on the train the other day and another guy had his bike with him. As he was taking it down from the head high peg that MAX trains have tor you to hang your bike from (by the front wheel) I noticed that his front brake couldn't possibly be working. I looked closer and sure enough. His front brake was trashed. He was riding around town on a bike with seriously degraded braking performance. No one is going to give a rats patootie unless he is creamed in an intersection that he couldn't stop for. If they even bother to find out what made an otherwise reasonable human being just ride out into rush hour traffic. Car lights in America and car and bike lights in Germany are regulated... I don't know about Europe but I can tell you that you can have the most scientifically calibrated low beam cut-off that automotive lighting science can devise but it all goes to hell if the mouthbreather driving the car, uses his high-beams in town at night. And many do. It makes little difference where the cut-off of the low beam is, if the mouthbreather driving the pick-up has lifted it so high that children and older adults riding with him need supplemental oxygen. Even low beams that high off the ground are going to blind oncoming traffic, and they do. So what does all that care and concern about beam width, cut-off, intensity, etc. mean in the real world of lax (non-existent) enforcement of roadgoing equipment?! I honestly don't think German style attention to bicycle lights will ever be a reality in the U.S. Not in yours and my lifetime.

H