Front light too bright!

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Comments

  • term1te
    term1te Posts: 1,462
    I'm all for flashing lights, and very bright lights, but not very bright flashing ones, especially if they are your only lighting. A guy came towards me recently on a cycle path with some mega-lumen flashing light. I nearly hit him. I could see he was there a mile off but it is much harder to judge distance and speed with such a bright flashing light. It was quite disorienting when he got within about 10 foot.

    I use a Fenix on steady beam at the front but have a small button battery type, but still bright, white flashing light on my bike helmet, a red flashing on on the back of the helmet.

    Soon to be the proud owner of a DX P7 special, but as a driver as well as a cyclist I'd hate to have it on flashing mode coming towards me or in my rear mirror. For safe visibility sometimes less is more.
    The Master
    The Moser
    The VN
  • jedster
    jedster Posts: 1,717
    What Term1te said
  • alfablue
    alfablue Posts: 8,497
    Pross wrote:
    alfablue wrote:
    Pross wrote:
    Did you have it on high or low? Low should be fine in a built up area. Plus as others have said make sure it's pointing downwards so that it only lights up the area of road ahead that you need to see to ride safely. Also, if it your only front light it should be set to constant and not flash in order to make you legal (same with rear lights). Flashing lights help get you notice but should be secondary. I would use a less powerful light on flash at the front as an extra if worried about being seen.
    Having the light on steady will not make it legal. The only thing that will make a bike light legal is if it is BS (or equivalent) Approved - 99.9% of bike lights are not. Although, a light that only flashes may not need BS approval, but any light that also has a steady mode does - weird mess, I know! :evil:

    Never knew that most lights don't comply to the BS! :shock: The point with flashing mode is that it would be obvious to a passing copper that it isn't legal. I pass about 20 cyclists on my way home most nights on busy Cardiff streets. On average I would say half have no lights at all and 7 or 8 of the others have flashing mode only on at least the back light if not both. I wonder if some people find the roads too safe and like to add a bit of risk to make life more interesting! :wink:

    I'm tempted by the lights the OP is using but think I'll go for a pair of Fenix torches for the extra modes.

    Flashing lights are legal, have been since 2005, providing they flash between 1 and 4 times per second. If, however, the flashing light also has a steady mode, it must be BS approved. I do not know of any flashing lights that do not have a steady mode, and I know of only one rear bike light that is BS Approved - the Cateye TL-AU100. This is not the best light, however. There are lights which state that they meet BS specification (such as the Smart Superflash 1/2 watt, which I use), but meeting the spec doesn't mean they have been approved. If they are approved they will carry the BS kite mark, if they don't, they're not. I understand that lights that conform to the German stVZO standard are considered as an equivalent to BS.

    I think there would be many more lights that could and would meet the BS spec, but there is probably a high cost to manufacturers to get them tested, and no one really seems to care.

    I would like to be legal, but safety is a higher priority!
  • oxoneil
    oxoneil Posts: 147
    And take it from me (cos it's my job) that no-one riding a bike in the dark with lights on is going to get stopped. Hardly anyone without lights does :wink:

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