In article <
[email protected]>, Jens Kr.
Kirkebø <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 23:43:56 GMT, David <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >I think most newbie commuters overcomplicate lighting requirements by buying expensive lights,
> >hopefully to be light king of the road where they would light themselves up like a christmas
> >tree. What about passive illumination using effective reflectors. They are cheap and light and
> >use other people's lights to light you up.
>
> And doesn't always work very well. Like cars pulling out from a side-street in front of you, they
> don't see you coming from the side if you only have reflectors, and probably not if you have a
> small led blinker too. If you have a HID light lighting up the whole road before them you can be
> sure they notice though. Same goes for people backing out of their driveway, crossing the bikelane
> or multi-use path.
>
And only cyclists get hit by cars backing out of their driveway.. What about joggers or walkers
that go out at night? I see plenty of them on my bike route and only about 30% have any sort of
blinkers strapped to their arms. And yet, we don't hear joggers being mowed down by people
backing out of their drive ways. The only time we heard of joggers being mowed down by motorists
was that, the drivers were drunk while driving. Also, the guy who mowed down the infamous Ken
Kifer was also drunk.
Also, bright lights from your bike can temporarily blind a motorist coming from the opposite lane.
This is simply because, our pupil's diaphragm open up more in the absence of bright ambient light.
By shining bright light to on coming traffic, you are making yourself unseen by them. Most motorists
will flash their beam to tell you that you are blinding them, but cyclists with HID or super bright
lights thought it was working when in fact, their stupidity act means that they run more risk of
being hit by opposite traffic who can't ascertain the location of the cyclist. All they see is just
a huge ball of light. There's no brains in doing that. In fact, this situation is made worse in the
rain where water droplets on the car's windshield and windows act as little prism reflectors. Your
bright HID light will not only blind on coming motorists, but also shift your actual bike position
in relation to the road.
What you need at night are bright LED blinkers. The Planet Bike SPOT white LED blinker has shown to
be very effective in alerting motorists at night of your presence.
> >People forget about bulb life. The success of a good generator headlight is not only good optics,
> >but to replace light bulbs often that are near or pass their life span. If you commute on a
> >yearly basis, riding nites for most of the year, you need to replace the bulb at least once a
> >year. So when did you replace yours??
>
> Once a year ? If i'm not incorrect, the HID bulb should last 1000 hours and not be noticeably
> dimmer at the end of it's life. I commute 1 hour daily, half the year in the dark. That's a little
> over 100 hours a year + pleasure rides. Let's say 150 hours, that gives me 6-7 years of bulb life.
>
I think if you read my past statement carefully, I was referring to generator lights which, by the
way, has a bulb lifespan of only 100 hours. I don't know why you think I was talking about HID bulb,
but consider that most commute last about 1 hr x 365 for the truly die hards. For most people, it
would be halved that for the winter months, so it clearly exceeded the 100 hrs lifespan of most
typical generator lights per year. Peter White Cycles mentions this on his SON website. Yet, people
rarely change their bulbs or know how to do it properly. And no, you don't use your fingers to
change as skin oil can decrease the lifespan of the new bulb too!
