Originally Posted by
tarwheel
I bike commuted all through college in the 70s using a pitiful "leg lamp" strapped to my ankle. It provided virtually no lighting of the road ahead of me and minimal visibility from the back, but was about the best thing around at that time in my budget. Would I want to go back to those days? Never. LED lights are what I consider the biggest advancement in bike commuting technology over the past 10 years. It is simply amazing the amount of light power (front and rear) you can get for relatively little money these days. My $100 Light & Motion Urban 800 is brighter and holds a charge better than lights that would have cost more than $500 not many years ago. You can buy taillights for less than $30 that are much brighter than anything available a while back. Not only are the new lights brighter and safer, they also make riding in the dark much more enjoyable. I think nothing about commuting in the dark for much of the year because I can see nearly as well as daylight with my LED lights.
Ditto that, when I used to have a cheap Walmart front light, I was scared as hell to be riding out after dark. Now I'm perfectly confident with my current setup.
I'm all for redundancy, blinkies, rechargeables, whatever. And I'm all for commuting on a different bike every now and then, maybe even a bike without a dynamo light; that's what I have the blinkies and the rechargeables for. But if you're serious about commuting by bike, I just don't see how you can get by without dynamo lights.
I disagree. I hope to build up a dedicated commuter at some point, but I'm not planning on using dynamo lights, as battery powered lights work just fine for me. And I'd say 90+ miles per week of commuting, with as much as possible through winter, is pretty darn serious.
Not using lights at night because you've been fine for so long without them, is like not using the internet because you got along fine for decades without it. Things change, stuff gets better. Do you really want to be stuck in the past like that?