Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
Why would I shine my light directly at motorists or in their eyes? The light is mounted right side, slightly below the fork crown and aimed to project the hotspot ~75 meters ahead. From the front it appears visually similar to a LED or HiD car headlight. My helmet light projects about half as far and almost never ends up illuminating the passenger compartment of passing or oncoming cars. If it does it's incidental, same as HiD lights cresting a rise before the auto-leveling feature activates.
I've ridden around 150 hours per year at night, the past 7 years, and the only feedback I've ever received has been non-verbal (increased passing distance, decreased speed), or positive - "You're lights are great I saw you from way far away" & "I thought you were a motorcycle haha". In my experience, motorist anger is almost always directed at cyclists because of the activity itself, not the behavior of the participant. Fully half my negative interactions (all during daylight with no lights on) last year were unprovoked verbal assaults from motorists directed at me while riding along a separate bikeway.
As I said:
But as noted above, individual experience varies so greatly, mainly because the vast majority of cyclists night ride in limited circumstances. Stay bright, stay safe.
Look, the design of car headlights and the design of virtually all bike headlights is just completely different. They are not remotely comparable, really in any way. The only bike headlights that do somewhat resemble car lights are the German STVZO lights and the Outbound Lighting lights, the latter of which was designed by an automotive lighting designer. It is basically a well-designed, mini-car light for bicycles. Nothing at all like the average bike light.
The other thing that I personally feel is being missed here is the idea that you have to "aim" your light at oncoming traffic to blind them. If you are a using a legit 1000ish lumen, typical bike light--and I have five of them--those lights are so bright, if their claimed lumen output is actually accurate, that pointing them anywhere other than at the ground is going to irritate and blind people. If you have not experienced this, then I suggest that your light is not nearly as bright as you think it is or, you are just not aware of how others are experiencing your light.