Originally Posted by
PaulRivers
And I say it's foolish to pretend that police lights aren't meant to be obnoxious, eye catching, and so annoying they make you want to pull over because they're so distracting. I've been pulled over, that's what the point is - it's not quite blinding, it's just so distracting you can't pay attention to anything else.
Sounds to me like you have a problem. I have no issue resisting the urge to pull over when I don't have to. And I am not even close to being blinded by emergency lights. And that's because the lights are about the same, or less, brightness than car tail lights. You can look up the SAE spec for yourself.
They don't let you use police-level lights on your regular car.
of course. and when we get to the point where bike lights look like a police car, then we can worry about that. So far I have't had anyone confuse me on my bike with a police car. Seriously, you can't be worried about this, are you?
Your last sentence is exactly my point - one puts this obnoxious, annoying, can't-look-at-anything-else light on your bike - and you *still* aren't 100% safe.
Who said you are? The experience I have in thousands of miles of using lights like this says that I am definitely safer with them than without them. That's the point. No one ever said a light makes one 100% safe. That's a fabrication.
So being less visible is better?
I think most of the time, cars either see you or they don't.
It's not binary. Seriously, come on.
Being as annoying as emergency vehicle lights on your bike doesn't seem to me to greatly increase your safety, but it does greatly increase your annoyance level.
I don't have emergency lights on my bike. i have one light that is bright and not even half as bright as the minimum spec for emergency lighting. I also do not have many lights that are bright that flash over a 360 arc as proscribed by the specs that cover emergence lights. No one is going to confuse me with a police cruiser. So I can't be as annoying as an emergency vehicle's lights except in someone's imagination.
If someone perceives that as annoying - nothing I can do about that. FWIW, I find it "annoying" to be run off the road by drivers who don't see me or misjudge the distance from their car to me. I do know that I have had a number of people tell me "nice lights" including police officers. From that I conclude they are not annoying but useful and appreciated. What is annoying to a lot of motorists is not being able to see cyclists until they feel that they don't have time to react.
There is not an issue here.
J.