Hope this rider has stock in a battery company!!

I don't like flashers. Blinky lights distract drivers, and a distracted driver is a deadly driver. I like steady lights, visible, but not blinding - but someone needs to come out with a steady + slow pulse mode - the pulse to attract attention, the steady light so drivers and other cyclists can judge direction and speed.

I disagree. Flashers differentiate the rider from the background of other red lights, and having used them ever since the original VistaLite LED taillight (so that's about 20 years), I do not see signs of a problem. In fact, my DiNotte and Nova BULL ultra-output taillights have drawn unsolicited praise (and nothing else) from motorists. They generally want to either thank me for being easy to see, or want to know what it is and where to get it.

For an example of differentiating oneself from the background, skip to about 6 minutes into this video. 45mph zone, seven lanes, rain, glare, pitch dark. Yeah, I'll be running flashing mode...

#t=361s

Biology says you're wrong. Humans, like most dinural binocular mammals, are positive-phototaxis organisms. This means we instinctively seek light - it helps us see better. If an unusual light catches our eye, we instinctively move toward it.

If you have a random blinkey thing on your bike, and an inattentive driver, you can see where this is going. Cops and tow-truck drivers can all tell you the same thing - once they turn on the flashers, the close calls start to happen.

Modern emergency flashers all do predictable patterns, usually an arrow-shape pointing around the cruiser or tow-truck.

This is why I want a steady light plus slow pulse.

why on earth was the first sentence necessary? Especially since you had to clarify it in the next!
For an alternative to simple blinking there is the Blackburn MARS 3, it has a wiggle pattern and there is chrome behind the red lens

The Radbot 1000 has slow pulse mode.

I would think 'the close calls start to happen' then because that is when they are stopped on or beside the roadway.

I don't agree with the blinky=bad thing either. I ride with a Dinotte 400R which is incredibly bright. I run it in the most obnoxious flash pattern it has. What happens is when cars come up behind me, they slow way down and move as far away from me as they can get which is exactly what I want. My "close calls" dropped way off when I started using this light.

J.

I use a Dinnotte 140L going on three years now.

Watching in my mirror I see the vehicles moving left away from me way back.

I Get stopped every week by drivers giving the thumbs up and asking, what is that light.

I made small hand out card, with all of the details of the light.

Do you run yours during the day too? If so, does that also seem to be helpful?

J.

I bought it to use for day riding.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...Dinotteone.jpg

lol, I've found something similar once I bought a pickup truck and a really loud obnoxious horn! Every time I see a biker about 500 feet up the road, I just start laying on the horn swerving wildly (inside my lane, to be safe of course). Those bikers slow way down and move as far away from me as they can get which is exactly what I want - often stopping completely and carrying their bike up onto the curb until I go by. I would encourage everyone to do the same in the interest of car/bike saftey. My "close calls" have also dropped way, way off since I started doing this!

which, incidentally, is common Minnesota driver behavior anyhow.

J.

I have the DX SuperFlash clone, and last week I switched from the seizure flash (very PBSF-like) to the slow flash where all 3 LEDs flash about once a second. I like it better.

As far as I can tell, the MagicShine taillight has the same driver and lens as the Dinotte 140L. It costs $30 if you already have a MagicShine headlight and battery, something like $60 if you need the battery and charger too.

Would that be the Magicshine company that had the batteries that caught fire?

J.

Yes, three of them out of the thousands sold. With the same battery technology that causes Nokia cell phones, Sony and Apple laptops, and many other devices to catch fire.

It's also unreported as to whether the ones that caught fire had been damaged. ANY LiIon cell that gets damaged can catch fire, no matter who built it. Hell, they can EXPLODE. That's what you get with high energy densities, no avoiding it.

the ppm out of magicshine is much higher than the same out of the other companies you mentioned. And, there were some serious fires that occurred.

Personally, it's not worth it to save a few bucks to me to take that sort of risk.

J.

What about for other similar products? Bike light batteries are a lot more likely to get abused than laptop batteries. Especially batteries that have no armor around them. It could be that the only real problem with them is that they weren't in a hard plastic shell, making them vulnerable to damage to the protection circuitry, or direct damage to cells, if dropped. 18650 cells, if impacted sharply on the top corners, short out and WILL burst into flames, period.

That could mean that it's a bad design decision to not put them in a protective case, but if it requires abuse to cause them to flame up, IMO that's something to take into consideration.

Risk is always a tradeoff. There's no such thing as a LiIon pack which can't possibly burst into flames. I kept my cells on a flameproof surface when charging and storing, as I do with all my larger capacity devices.

The fact is that it basically turned into a total recall because of several fires one of which caused significant damage to a home and was fortunately found before the place went up entirely (as opposed to a closet/bedroom IIRC). There was no replacement alternative for months and when there was it came from the US importer and not from the manufacturer. So whether it was poor design or a poor recovery or both doesn't really matter. None of it speaks well for the company or the product or their ability to support their customers. Another example of "you get what you pay for."

J.