Originally Posted by freako
By the way there is such a thing as getting too bright of a light, especially riding on the road. I found 6 watts to be plenty on well lit city streets, and 10 watts plenty on dark streets, the only time I use all 16 watts is on curvy roads or wet roads or fast descents. Much more over 20 watts and you can get a real bad light bounce off the road and back into your eyes.
In my experience in using my buddy's NiteRider lite (15/10/6 watt settings), 15 was about the bare minimum I felt comfortable with. I could get by with 10, but really never even dug that. One leg of my commute is on a road that's typically littered with your standard road-side debris, usually consisting of gravel, sometimes broken glass, recently 4 different sawsall blades (I probably ought to stop and toss them off the shoulder some time), etc. This fall/winter it'll be even MORE of a mess, and the more illumination I can get, the better. Besides, I want to keep my speed at daylight speed if at all possible. I hate slogging along at 15mph or slower.