Me too, I guess I'd better add another 1200 to 1400 more lumens to my bike so I can see him sooner.

+1x10E6

Guess I'll never really have an opinion on this cuz a.)there's too few riders to crowd the MUP in the daytime, much less at night; and b.)my side of town, you take your life in your hands riding after dark.

Personally, my solution to this non-existent problem is not to ride on MUPs.

I'm going to eat more carrots and stop using lights altogether.

I'm going to travel to Denver to ride around. When I return I'll post a thread: WHAT'S WITH ALL THE DAMN NINJA CYCLISTS?!? (WARNING: PART RANT SO NO COMPLAINING)

For every one person who mentions it, it's usually safe to assume there are at least 20 people with the same complaint -- at least that's true in most customer service situations. The ones who don't mention it to you complain about it to their friends and family and sully your image without your knowledge; the one who actually complains to you at least does the favor of bringing it to your attention.

I asked a state senator about overly-bright bicycle lights not long ago -- so far, at least, it's way below their radar in a sea of red ink. Wait for someone well-connected to have a well-publicized accident with some yahoo with an HID lamp aimed in drivers' faces, then see what happens.

lol
Of all the things wrong with our society...

I should clarify, I didn't go out looking for a senator to lobby, I was meeting with her anyway, and happened to have had a conversation with a local cyclist who was pulled over by the police because of the brightness of his tail lights. So I thought I'd ask if that was a trend or a blip.

A few weeks ago a driver slowed to do me a favor by educating me that I should be on the sidewalk where I belong.
I should appreciate her bringing this to my attention, lest she complain to her family and friends thereby sullying my image without my knowledge.

I know you were trying to be funny or ironic, but I really want to have brights so I can get people to dim.

I'm sure the epidemic of bright bicycle lights is top priority for most state politicians. These lights are a threat to the American way of life and must be controlled! Hopefully as soon as they figure out the minor stuff like budgets, education, crime and all that, they can get around to solving this pressing issue.

what kind of tail lights was this cyclist using? I have a pile of high power red leds that I haven't made into lights yet because I'm worried they'll be too bright.

I haven't had any issues with the local law enforcement, and I have 2 PBSF set to blink on my seat stays, 1 PBSF set to steady on my Carradice blinkie loop, and a Supernova E3 (wired, steady) above the non-drive-side PBSF.
I'm adding a B&M Seculite Plus (wired, steady, plus red reflector) to my rear fender since I modified my front lighting last night. The E3 taillight is wired to the E3 headlight, which is now my "descender" and/or "midnight backroads floodlight". Since it won't be used all the time, I wanted a second wired taillight associated with the SON Edelux I've added to the front as my primary lamp.

Parallel wired to a SON28 so the running options are: Edelux only, E3 only, or both at once.

I don't know all his lights, but having briefly ridden behind him I'll say they're definitely too bright -- a car driving with tail lights that bright would probably also attract police attention, especially if any of them were flashing lights. In his case, they were all flashing red, no steady red, and the police at first thought he was impersonating an emergency vehicle.

I disagree, the other 20 people probably thought better of complaining for a few different reasons:

1. They avoid confrontation like the plague
2. They realized the complaint was not that big of a deal
3. They were too lazy to mention it
4. They figured it was their own problem, perhaps due to scratched glasses lenses or bad eyesight, etc.

I'm glad all of those other people don't complain. And Captain Complainer can just deal with it, or get law enforcement to do something if it's really a problem. Unless a light is shining UP, there is no way it can be blinding. Especially with the MagicShine, the beam is pretty tight even at 50 feet. The brightness of the spill is nowhere near enough to be blinding, not by a long shot.

Maybe the Magicshine has a tight beam which isn't blinding, but there are plenty of lights and mount positions out there which don't need to be aimed 'up' to impair the vision of an oncoming cyclist.

Any of the HID lamps from L&M have that dimpled symmetrical reflector pan which makes for a very even light across the entire beam. The top spill on those is very wide, and very bright. Just mounting it on the handlebars puts it high enough that even when the spot center is on the pavement, the spill is in people's eyes. There's not much choice but to look down and to the right to avoid it.
Anything Helmet Mounted. I know it's a great place to stick a light for spotting street signs, scoping tight corners, reading maps/cue sheets, or spotlighting inattentive drivers. The problem with having that as a sole source of front lighting is that there is no way to aim it such that the main spot is doing any good and the spill isn't blinding people. Many of the MUP riders who have them here have learned to look to the right and avoid blinding oncomers. There are always a few who can't help but be friendly and look right at you when they say good morning, shooting you in the face with a 600 lumen photon torpedo. Again, I've learned to just look down and to the right until they're past.

Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!!

When I started this thread, I had no idea it would end up with as a flame war! Also violence is being threatened towards others because of this? Honestly you guys need to "lighten" up! ::rim shot:: Seriously, this is not a subject that I thought would evoke such strong emotions.

So this is the setup that I'm currently using that got the initial comment of "dim your light please." Notice some of the suggestions on this forum are simply not an option for this type of bike. It it the MagicShine light that everyone is raving about and it's true about how very bright it is. With that said, I use it on the lowest setting on the MUP path and I have it angled slightly downward to prevent it from not blinding other riders. However I still received a comment based on this precautions that I made. I'm afraid with this setup, their is little else that I'm able to do. I can use my feet to kind of block it in a very awkward fashion, but if I had to do that for every rider that I pass then I would hardly do any pedaling of my own!

I'd still vote for a hood of some kind, like you see with theater stage lighting or traffic signals. Using a piece of material (plastic, foil, whatever) pasted flat over the face of the light wouldn't work so well, since it would both limit total output and not really block upward scatter that much.

That seems like a very reasonable solution, I might have to try this out when I get some more time to tweak on my bike.

It would be really neat if I could fabricate a hood that can raise and lower by an attachable line from the light. I'll have to look into both of these options.

What would probably be easier would be an easily-activated helmet light. There's not much reason for lighting up anything above waist level unless you're reading street signs or watching for bats (and since you're on a 'bent, you'll be ducking under any low-hanging hazards anyway; upright riders would have knocked them out of the way, too).

A helmet light can point as high as you want, though, like a high beam to complement the "low beam" role of the main light. Then, when you've seen what you needed to see, you can turn it back off.

I've smoked more than a few newly-low-hanging branches riding during/after wind storms.

And there was a telephone cable hanging neck-high over a public road on my ride in of last week. It looped back up high enough over the middle of the road so that the cars didn't hit it. I have no idea how it didn't catch on any trucks for a full week.

No helmet light though. I have enough stuff strapped on my head this time of the year.

Cars have laws regarding use of lights. I've been pulled over for having my fog lights on. I get annoyed at the folks who have extra bright lights on their cars when I drive, and at SUVs whose headlights are above my eye-level.

There is a balance between seeing everything and not interfering with others that plays out in cars. It will play out in bicycles and MUPs too, and by laws if we don't figure out a good way to balance.

Keep pissing each other off enough, and there'll be laws about it.

More pointless rarely enforced laws. Oh joy.

Laws might not work so well out on the trail, but they'd prevent certain lights from being sold and encourage better-designed lights.