Originally Posted by
79pmooney
I rode for decades in the days before any good lights with just a good reflecting vest, minimal reflecting stuff on the bike and religiously, an ankle light. First decade around Boston. Never hit. (Yes, I put myself in a few situations a good headlight would have kept me out of. But the good batteries and bulbs hadn't happened yet. The bright systems were big, heavy and expensive. Night Rider's halogen headlight with the WB battery, real runtime, bright and reliable? I was on board fast.
So did I, I'm 70 now, but back in those days we didn't have distracted drivers like today, today you need to be lit up. I never wore a reflecting vest in those days, but I did have a Berec lamp, which all it was good for was to be seen, I replaced the bulb with a halogen, while brighter it wasn't much good for seeing the road. I then had a Vistalite tail light Xenon strobe, that was about as bright as a candle. I then graduated to a Cygolite Metro dual beam 13.5 watt light that ran on 6 D batteries, but replaced the long range bulb with a higher powered bulb that bumped the wattage output to 16 watts, it had halfway decent light output, could actually see where I was going. Of course times have changed and now I have LED lights that those old lights couldn't come close to comparing to.