There is NOTHING wrong with flashing lights during the day--or at night, too, if you're in a well lit area.

IMO best scenario is a good solid headlight, aimed correctly, paired with a blinky-non blinding front as well. On the rear, the same except red.

I too ride only in the daytime, but I have found these to be awesome little lights, especially considering they're rechargeable and inexpensive.

CLICK USB LIGHT SET

I hate flashing front lights and find them extremely annoying and distracting. For some strange reason, strobing lights seem to be popular among a small segment of riders that I encounter on the greenways, and all that they serve to do is annoy riders coming from the other direction. IMHO, front lights that pulse rather than strobe are a better option.

Light & Motion's Urban series of lights are a good option for a daytime running light, and they have a setting that pulses rather than strobes. Biketiresdirect.com has a number of L&M lights on sale right now. I also have a L&M Viz 360 on my helmet, and it's a great backup or supplemental light for commuting, but oddly it strobes rather than pulses when in flash mode. I rarely ever run it on flash mode.

I ride these during the day:

Bicycle 3 LED Front Rear Tail Warning USB Light Rechargeable White Lamp | eBay

Tail Red Rear Safety Bicycle Cycling NEW Warning Light Bike USB Rechargeable

Bright enough to be seen without blinding anyone.

I have had more than one driver tell me these made it much easier for them to notice me on the road...

Using a helmet light with a handlebar mounted light makes more sense.

There is a category of riders who have been using headlights during the day since very long ago. I am talking about motocyclists. They needed that to be identified as oncoming trafic in spite of their (relatively) small dimensions. Have you ever seen one of them using blinkies ?

If you want to be identified as a fast approaching vehicle claiming its right of way, use a steady headlight.
If you want to be identified, in the first tenths of a second, as en enigma, and then only as a (slow) bicycle , use a blinking headlight. Blinking light doesn't help understanding the speed of the approaching object. Quite the opposite, actually.

Yikes. I had a ride like that several weeks ago, with about half a dozen near-collision passes. But it was in daylight. Most drivers went out of their way to avoid crowding me, but in so doing some exposed themselves and oncoming vehicles to extraordinary risks. And it wasn't necessary. In every case they could have passed safely by just waiting a few more seconds.

Motorcycles are much wider than most bicycles and easier to identify at a distance, even in a wide angle rear view mirror.

At a distance on the MUP I often find it difficult to tell whether an oncoming person is a jogger or a slow bicyclist. From hundreds of yards away the bike is very difficult to spot, unless it's the bulky city bikes with baskets. And in my wide angle rear view mirror it's even more difficult to tell the difference between a jogger/pedestrian and a cyclist, especially on a road bike. I have to glance in the mirror a couple of times to get a sense of their approach speed or whether I'm putting more distance between myself and whatever's in my mirror. And I have very good distance vision (although I need reading glasses for anything within arm's length).

Also, some motorcycles use paired lights, especially on the back. Makes it much easier for drivers to estimate distance and speed of the narrower vehicles. That's why I use paired lights on my bicycle. I use helmet lights, front and rear, and bike-mounted lights. I recorded some nighttime videos of myself riding away from and toward the camera and it was much easier to estimate my distance and speed with the paired lights. At a glance two or more visual reference points are easier to determine divergence/convergence.

The problem with the 'don't use hi beams' argument is that close to zero percent of walkers, and at least half of all cyclists, don't use lights or reflective clothing at all at night. Even at the highest settings, with two headlights AND abundant trail lighting, cyclists and walkers are often difficult to spot until they are within, say 10 or 15 feet as a result.

Many trail users wander into the opposite lane, stop in the middle of the lane, and there is a large homeless population who camp near the trails who pay no attention to where they are or what's going on.

Hmmm, good point.

Lots of cars have day time running lights now too - day time lights are required going through many tunnels and in some special geographical areas. Imagine how annoying and dangerous it would be if EVERYBODY had flashing headlights.

my observation when driving is that flashing lights on bikes are far more visible than steady lights day or night. I want to be visible so I use flashing red blinkies in the back and bright (360 or so lumen) flashing white in the front.

I do use a MUP on the way home at times, and once I had a guy complain about my bright light....it was a bit situational I was going uphill so the beam aim caught him differently than it would on the flat. Hoever, I had very little sympathy for the guy.....he was using the MUP as a personal race track, was passing some on too fast on a narrow section and was directly in front of me...I braked.

Wow! I had some reservations about starting this thread, but now I'm glad I did. Initially, I thought flashing daytime lights, front and rear, were the new norm for cyclists - especially commuters. But the differing views posted here have been a real eye-opener.

I, personally, still believe that a blinking headlight is much more noticeable than a static one. Often, when I see a solid bright light on the road during the day, I am convinced that it's just a piece of metal reflecting the sun, so I ignore it. But the first few times I saw blinking headlights on bicycles, I could not take my eyes off them, and somehow I was able to easily determine what direction they were moving and how fast. Several people have tried to convince me I am wrong about that, but I know what I saw.

On the other hand, I am an obsessively "polite" cyclist, who will go out of my way not to confuse, upset, or piss off other cyclists, pedestrians, or drivers, so I do not take the comments from people who dislike blinking headlights lightly.

Keep the replies coming, folks. This is a good discussion.

I think that people are annoyed by flashing lights if they're determined to be annoyed. When I've seen flashing lights coming towards me, I treat them the same as car headlights. I just don't look at them, and they don't really bother me.

If I had decided that they were annoying, I guess I'd stare at them and be irritated by them.

This is what you don't want. There's a basic instinct to move in the direction you look. Do you want either pedestrians, joggers, or cyclists to start steering towards you? Granted, it's only a momentary reflex, and easily overridden, but it seems to me that this might not be a good idea.

Many years ago, I took the motorcycle safety course, and the instructors were very against the 'common' belief that 'loud pipes save lives'. First day of class was how to turn, and the basic, very simple rule was 'look where you want to go, and the bike will follow'. Loud pipes, they said, tend to cause drivers to steer toward the sound, not away.

If the same principle applies, then by attracting your attention to the point that 'you could not take your eyes off', then the automatic reflex is to start steering slightly in that direction.

My gut reaction is that blinking lights are probably a bad idea, as a general rule. Right now, I DO use them in the daytime, because part of my commute is through a wooded MUP that is narrowed by untrimmed growth, and is not straight. A flashing light gives some warning to oncoming dog walkers, and the rare cyclist. I've been using a blinking rear light, but am rethinking that. Part of my evening commute involves pretty bad solar glare, on an urban street, and I feel vulnerable.

from canklekat:

This makes so much sense, that if I continue commuting much longer, where I am doing nighttime riding, I may have to double my light budget (or more, I am currently using inexpensive, AAA-based lights, and have a $20 USB light on order. I may need more, better lighting all around)

I've had several occasions that people don't see a flashing light at night. The split second the light is off was the split second I was in their sight. Since bicycle has a very thin profile, easily blocked by land posts, or windshield frame. One guy even stopped and asked my why I didn't turn my lights on when approaching the intersection, said he saw me too late. I showed him my light and said it was flashing all the time.

Flashing lights also make it hard for drivers to judge speed and direction of your movement.

I wrote an article here about bicycle lights:
Bicycle lights

It explains differences between being seen and being noticed.
Effectiveness of reflective materials.
Dangers of poor light positioning, beam alignment and brightness.

Cool stuff in that article. Especially the explanation of how the angles of a bike and a vehicle on a hill can render a rear reflector useless.

No lights on MUP except solid, pointed down, when it is dark

On the street, I like a flashing headlight in the daytime. A bright flashing light, pointed down, allows you to be seen and does not "freeze" drivers.

Sure, but we're not talking about night lighting, this thread is about daytime lighting.

At night, I MIGHT run a strobe, but only in addition to a bright steady light. On the route I ride, if I turn my lights off, I literally can not see my hand in front of my face. I once lost my front light about 2 miles from home and I couldn't even really walk the bike. Since there is essentially traffic there at night, I took my taillight off, put it in steady mode and rode home slowly with that held in my hand. One car did come, when it got close I pulled over and stopped and pointed the taillight at him until he passed.

Yes, but the point of the post was the short amount of time you are in driver's focus. So a flashing front light, without a steady one can be useless.

Your peripheral vision is much better at detecting movement/motion. This is the reason a flashing light catches a driver's attention. In day time riding this is far superior to a steady one because the issue of judging distance isn't so relevant.

Part of the 'explanation' in that article is that "in order to work, reflector needs to be under direct light, and it directs light right back. That means that if it is lit from the left side, it will reflect the light to the opposite side – to the right."
That would be correct if you were using a mirror as your reflector, but is not true at all for the 'corner reflector' technique used in actual reflectors. In these, the light is reflected back in the direction from which it came: i.e. if lit from the left side the light is reflected back to the same side, to the left. That makes reflectors far more effective than mirrors would be since the driver's headlight beam is directed right back at him even if it hits your reflector at an angle.

[You get the same effect if throwing a ball hard into the corner of a room (i.e. where two walls meet the ceiling or floor). After bouncing off all three surfaces the ball will rebound back towards you.]

While it is true that the reflector is more efficient than a mirror and light coming from the left won't be reflected to the right, the angle of incidence is still important and narrow. If the light source is too far off axis, it won't reflect back or even hit the reflecting surface. To use your analogy of a ball thrown into the corner, if you miss the corner, the ball doesn't rebound back towards you.

And reflectors are mostly useless during daylight hours. They still reflect light but the ambient light overwhelms it.

Don't think anyone has claimed that reflectors are at all effective during daytime. Main problem is again that they reflect light back to the source. If that source is the sun then the reflected light goes back in that direction. That's going to be up in the sky somewhere - not where a motorist is going to see it.

And sure, if the driver's headlight beam completely misses your reflector then there won't be any light for it to reflect. But reflectors are still much more effective than that article would have us believe. I'd never depend on them alone, but they make a very cheap and lightweight backup to active lighting systems.

This is true, but the emphasis was on the fact that reflectors are a lot less effective if lit under an angle, or if lights don't hit them at all. Practically, not very reliable unless directly in front of headlights. As explained.

Anyway, to get back on topic, today I looked at a few light sets that an apathetic salesman described as "the ones most people buy for day riding." None of these were in my price range and none of them looked anywhere near as bright as the ones I am seeing on the road lately. The rear blinkies, in particular, didn't impress me at all.

So should I assume that all the really bright light sets I see on the road during the daytime are $75-100? That's crazy to me.

https://www.modernbike.com/cygolite-...t-sl-usb-combo
I have a Metro 300 on my backup bike and on my wife's bike. They are very bright IMHO.

That's more like it.

By the way, I should mention that, before I restored my old NiteRider, I was using a $5.00 32-LED flashlight I got from Harbor Freight. It still works fantastically, but doesn't have a "flash" mode. Had I not gotten the bug to play with the old NiteRider (no flash mode, either), I would still be using the HF light, or I'd be looking for a similar cheapo flashlight with variable settings. However, it seems many people here are indifferent to - or adamantly against - a flashing front beam, so I'm not rushing out to spend a lot of money on one. What's REALLY drawing me in right now, though, are the very noticeable TAIL lights that I see on the road, but not in the stores.

Well, I really like the Cygolite Metro 550. It's a bit under $50. I think it's a very good all around light. The battery life is only about 1:15 on high but in the daytime you wouldn't be running that mode anyway.

Or you can go with the Chinese no-name way. This is what I do, having tried a bunch of lights, this is pretty much what I use now.

$12: http://www.ebay.com/itm/271959824679

(Obviously it's not 8000 lumens. Maybe 600 or so, but that's perfectly adequate IMO)

The above comes with a pretty junky battery. It might give you close to a couple of hours of runtime, and last a few months. When that dies or you get fed up with it, I recommend:

This battery box - waterproof, empty, $10: 4X 18650 Battery Pack Water Resistant Case Storage Cover for Bike Bicycle Lamp | eBay
Four high quality Panasonic cells to go in it, $27: https://smile.amazon.com/p/B00C26OWGS

Still under $50 even if you just buy everything at once. If you can swing it that's not a bad idea, use the cheap battery the light comes with as a backup in case you lose lights on the way.

Chinese knock offs are fine for some, but you will not catch me fudging around with those. I depend on my lights and there are so many variables with the knock offs that it just isn't worth it.

If you want to get a good set of lights to be seen with, find the ones you want, don't think about the price, and just buy them. If you use them and it prevents being hit one single time, they paid for themselves.

Yeah, but some of us like fudging around with things, or are cheap...or both.:D

Besides, I always run two lights--one on steady and one on flash at night; a single flashing one during the day. The odds that both will fail on any one ride? Pretty small.