Some people use a bunch of lights, but most people only have a couple of lights on their bike, and of course, many with no lights, so a passive reflector is better than nothing.

The advantage of reflectors, and reflectorized tape is that they can cheaply cover a much greater area than just the lights, and perhaps more angles too.

The current generation of LEDs is very high intensity, but with a narrow beam.

Thus, I'd advocate a combination of the two.

I'll try to get a simple camera flash photo of my bike trailer in the next few days... with the trailer dating back to perhaps the start of this thread The old reflective media is still quite effective.

Over 14 years later, still a good idea.

I mentioned it in another thread, one night there was a bicycle several hundred feet ahead of me. He had a rear reflector and reflective bands on his ankles. The rear reflector was far, far more attention getting than the ankle bands were. When he was somewhat off to the side than directly in front of me the reflector still caught part of the light and was noticeable while the ankle bands were not that reflective without light hitting them directly.

I'm having a hard time visualizing this. Where are you putting them on the sides of the rim that isn't braking surface?

The rim has a braking surface right next to the edge of the rim, then the center is kind of V-shaped, so there's space between where the spokes connect in the center and the braking surface on the edge.

Here's a picture:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2nsdpi5wwh...62003.jpg?dl=0

Ah, ok, so not box section rims then.