On Saturday, September 16, 2017 at 8:03:56 PM UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/16/2017 2:34 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-16 09:28, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/16/2017 10:51 AM, Joerg wrote:


On a steep uphill I sure want my rear light as bright as it gets. On
winding uphill stretches the risk of being seen too late is highest.

Have you ever bothered to get a friend to ride your bike at night, then
observe your bike's lights and reflectors as you drove your car?

I've done things like that many times, with my family, with friends,
with bike club members. And as mentioned, I've gotten spontaneous
compliments from motorists.

All of this testing has showed that a cyclist does NOT need super-bright
lights or high tech equipment to be perfectly visible.

The modern paranoia calling for super-bright lights is silly. It's
spouted by people who haven't done simple tests.


Nonsense. I did tests. If you want to be able to pull up to 15mph on
singletrack or 25mph on a road with occasional debris on it those 1000
lumen lights are a safety feature. Because you see stuff. For slowpokes
that is, of course, a different story.

At night, I don't often hit 25 mph. I don't know many cyclists who do.
But when I've done it I don't recall trouble seeing adequately with my
Busch & Muller Cyo headlights.

BTW, I do have one friend who completed Paris-Brest-Paris a couple
times, over ten years ago. (He's one of the guys who finished my double
century with me.) PBP is hilly riding in dark and remote Brittany, with
lots of night riding. His lighting equipment was very, very ordinary,
and nothing at all close to 1000 lumens.

However, I note a subtle shift in the topic of conversation. Upthread
you were claiming a nighttime road cyclist needs glaring lights to _be
seen_. Now you're switching to fast-riding cyclists needing 1000 lumens
to see where they're going.

I think you'll dance around any and all topics in your effort to "prove"
that riding a bike is very, very dangerous.

--
- Frank Krygowski

My experiences riding off road in the dark is that once you get to a certain brighness of light with a good beam pattern (not flashlight-type narrow beam)that more lumens do nothing because due to trees, twists/turns on the trail, you can NOT see any further anyway. You have LONGER viewable distances on most roads than you do on most trails.

BTW, I wear eyeglasses and I now wear a pair of flip-up sunglass lenses on them at night when riding so that when a bicyclist or motor vehicle with blindingly bright lights approaches I can flip the lenses down to avoid being blinded.

Cheers