I was just reading some of this thread, went to the store, and on the way back saw a cyclist, slow, on a regular old kind of bike. I was a good 200 feet away coming from behind, and saw her rear light, it was still light out close to evening. Since I want to beef up my lights this fall I wanted to see what kind of light she had. Well, it wasn't a light I was seeing from 200 feet, it was her reflector! Amazing how my headlights were bouncing off her reflector, and I still couldn't tell it was a reflector until she turned the corner, so even at angle as she turned the reflector was still effective. Well not only am I getting a new rear light but also a big fat reflector.

here here.

SO that begs the question. I have taken care of the illumination side of things. my p7 shine 900 knock off is on the way my solar reds are on the way and my rocket whatever super bright reds are on the way and my blue EL wire is on the way.

SO whta do you guys suggest for good quality reflectors? does it matter? do they make a reflector "sphere ball spheroid" kind of thing so it works from "ALL" directions?

SOLAS grade tape is rather effective. Did a Bing search and found this site. Or you could get some glass beads and apply a clear coat and make the entire bike reflective, also shown on the site. https://www.colebrothers.com/biketape/.

If you're more interested in the more traditional plastic w/mounting brackets, I imagine Cateye should be sufficent.

ordered 2 packs of the tape from that link. thanks. if their sample pictures are remotely accurate the difference is amazing! cheap too.

Later on I may get those glass beads and cover my frame and rims I like how it comes out!

If you want a little plastic reflector that beats a good light (as long as the light is on, of course), it does not exist.

That said, you can do one thing with reflectors that you can't easily do with a light -- cover your entire bike in it. Reflector tape everywhere will make a bike light up everywhere if somebody's headlights are right on it. And if not, well, the reflectors won't do much, but that's why you'll have lights too.

If they did, it would not work well. What does work well is reflector tape everywhere.

well duh a passive reflector won't work as well as a decent active light. I was not asking that. :-)

but I was not sure if there were "differences" for example a harbour fright $3 led flashlight is NOT in the same class as a "decent" $10 ebay light and that ebay light can't touch a decent Cree based light etc.. etc..

Just like dollar store crayons are no match for crayola crayons.

IE is there a difference in quality brand etc..

Clearly their is (from the link provided for those 4x1 strips) huge difference :-) hence why I asked

Yes, but you were asking about "good quality reflectors" and a "sphere ball spheroid" of some sort -- and none of the reflectors made for bicycles are really much good. (Unless they're huge.) Reflector tape is where it's at.

For the record, your "decent" $10 ebay light probably is a Cree based light (certainly, you can find them on eBay for that price), and you've already said it's decent. And while the lights with the newer emitters are likely better -- they're not that much better.

I'll defer to your experience there. My kids don't seem to care.

Not only that, but it will be almost impossible for anyone to blind you with their lights on your bike, thanks to the reflective tape sending the light right back at the source. You might have to be careful not to look at your bike if you have a decent headlamp, though. If you tried to do the same thing with some form of active light, you'd probably not be able to really safelyn look at your bike while riding at night.

Tor

That glass bead thing is weird, I wonder if it works as good as the picture looks? It is at the very least interesting concept. I would think that if it really does work that good maybe in the future all bikes will have that clear coat on for safety? Probably too much to ask manufactures to do.

Damn, you'd think this thread was about religion or politics. You say you think it's best to use reflective tape with lights, and a herd of folks jump out screaming that there's no way reflective tape alone is better than lights.

At risk of having that posse jump on me, I'll state that my belief is that reflective tape over surfaces that cannot practically have lights is a great idea. Until such a time that every square millimeter of a bike and riding apparel can literally actively light up, reflective materials make up the gap between reality and fantasy. Of course lights should be used. Those come first. To think that reflective tape replaces lights is ridiculous. It's a supplement.

Anyhow, there's a lot of assumptions about lighting. If you have the resources, it'd be wise to read the following book. It does a lot to explain lighting technology and human perception.


Anyhow, I want to address the assumptions about the visibility of reflective materials and lights. I'll test a few types of reflective materials in many different ways. Hopefully results can start to be presented next week.

Sigh . . .

I sigh in agreement too. Now where's those books that believe in Big foot?

Are you telling me . . . BIGFOOT'S NOT REAL??!?

Depends, I have a friend who has size 18 feet, we call him BigFoot due to his feet and the fact he's 6' 7" tall.

This is what reflective running vests work great for.

I thought they were BigFEETs... My bad

ahem....

\

Where do you find this? How much? What powers it? Is it rechargeable? (If you haven't guessed by now, I'm impressed)

Yeah... now tell me this wouldn't attract drunk drivers!

like moths to a flame.

I rode tonight with yellow reflective strips on the side of my bike. Where my bike was virtually invisible even with bright head and tail lamps, the bike now brightly lights up with very little light directed towards it. Combined with reflective clothing, my visibility from the side is now greatly improved. Pictures coming soon...

I've added some reflective strips. They're not attached directly to the bike. I used plastic shelf 'paper' directly on the bike, and the put the reflective tape over it. The shelf paper comes off easily without residue.

This is how it looks to my eye using a Fenix HP10 on the lowest mode (8 lumens) with a diffuser. I used this lighting set up to show that this lights up well even with minimal lighting. The tape on the bike looks like a beacon when the diffuser on the headlamp isn't used, and even more so on higher settings...it should show up very well with the spill off of car headlights.

Red reflexite on the seat stays, but they point rearward.
Yellow reflexite or SOLAS on the sides.
Class 3 shirt.




I have plenty of lighting on the bike and my helmet, but they're off for this picture.

Nice shirt and nice price.

Agreed, but I have to thank another cyclist that put me onto this type of shirt. He wore it on his cross country tour. It's a class 3 shirt, which is the highest visibility rating for highway workers. I just saw that the link I provided costs about $10 to ship. The price for Prime members is about the same if you buy directly from Amazon instead of an affiliate.