Originally Posted by ryanspeer
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.
I'll add that it's not always about seeing the ground either. In an urban setting, having a weak light is just plain dumb. You are competing with a thousand different light sources. You need something that gets noticed and not in the '
hi, I'm over here' way but in the '
Hey! Dipwad! I'm here!' way. I want cars to think that I'm a train that jumped the tracks! If they can't figure out what's coming at them, they just might wait to find out before they pull out in front of that train!