wrote:

On Mar 15, 1:10 pm, Andre Jute wrote:
Andreas Oehler wrote:

Millions of BUMM rear lights are used in Germany and the Netherlands.
Water problems with their rear lights are very rare.

Of course you're right. But in Germany and The Netherlands (note
capitalization in English) the dealer and the manufacturer are down
the road, in the US it is not so easy to get service, in parts of the
US as we have heard recently conditions in winter are atrocious, and,
anyway, why buy a light that is inadequate for local conditions
(regardless of how well it sells at home) if in addition the makers
cannot be bothered to make it watertight?

If, as Andreas states, water problems with these lights are very rare,
then Andre's final question is pointless. Instead of begging the
question, Andre should provide some evidence that the millions of
Germans and Dutch using these lights somehow haven't noticed that they
don't work in their rainy weather.

I didn't say "millions of Germans and Dutch using these light somehow
haven't noticed that they don't work in rainy weather" -- you're
trying to put words in my mouth Krygo and then demanding I prove
something I didn't say. It is primary school debating trick, about the
level of your mentality.

Of course, that might be
difficult!

Not difficult at all, Krygo: I'll do better than that. Here is
evidence that an official independent body, the Dutch Cyclists'
Association
http://www.fietsersbond.nl/urlsearch...ewtype=popu p
found the B&M (BUMM) D'Toplight Plus to have "low watertightness", in
Dutch "Enige minpunt is de lage waterdichtheid," (Ideomatically
translated as, "One negative mark is the lack of water resistance.")

Flashing lights should be reserved for special unusual situations. With
everyone around flashing bright - everyone will be anoyed.

You haven't put your mind in gear, Andreas. That may apply to the
Germany and The Netherlands, where there are hordes of cyclists and
the attitude of drivers is different. It doesn't apply where I live,
it doesn't apply in the States. The cyclist on the road is minority
exception here and in the States, not the majority, not even even a
substantial presence. Think the matter through and you will see the
sense of a flashing light to announce the exception -- the fact that
the bicyclist in your words is a "special unusual situation".

Here in the US, the twinkling or flashing LED taillight has become the
nighttime signature of a cyclist (or at least, the subset that bothers
with lights at all). This has nothing much to do with driver
attitudes.

Who said it did, Krygo?

It's simply because the brief flashing action allowed LEDs
to be bright while reducing battery drain, all at low expense. The
inexpensive LED units became so popular, they are now universally
recognized.

Who said we're talking about about cheap blinkies? I'm recommending
two expensive flashing lights, the Dinotte and the top of the Cateye
range, the TL-LD1100. What's more, I specifically said that the cheap
**** you're talking about is not good enough. Stop trying to force a
discussion that is clearly over your head into something you can
understand.

I don't find the flashing or twinkling (depending on the specific
unit) to be annoying. However, that's primarily because the intensity
is not out of control. Super-bright lights with bad optics can be
very annoying and very hard on everyone's nighttime vision, especially
if they flash.

Houshold lights with rotational symmetric optics are not appropriate for
vehicle applications.

Really? You should tell that to the makers of hundreds of types of
bike lights made with MR11 lamps. You can't tell that to me, and be
believed, because I have MR11 lamps (made by One Electron) on my bike
that work a treat, the prototypes I built were MR16 and worked
brilliantly, and MR16 lamps are found on auxiliary lamps for
automobiles that I notice are TUV approved. You're talking through the
back of your neck, Andreas. Perhaps you have a commercial connection
that inspires these distortions?

I agree with Andreas: rotationally symmetric beams on a road vehicle
are, at best, crude and ham-fisted. Their popularity with certain
unsophisticated consumers doesn't change that fact.

Yawn. True to your dishonest form, Krygowski, you've cut away the part
of my letter which makes clear that what Andreas is doing is saying:
These lights made by BUMM are good enough for Germans, so they should
be good enough for you, and me saying, Bull****.

Furthermore, if the legislators see fit to license lights, and I can
see they deliver more light than other lights, why should I, or anyone
else, not have the better lights rather than risk our lives on the
lesser output of lights a couple of internet clowns, one of them with
suspect commercial connections, want to push because they are on a
crusade against battery lights?

You simply don't need as much light going up into the sky as you need
downward onto the road; it's a waste. That should be obvious to
anyone.

Another straw man argument. Remember, I've built those lights, and
used bought ones? I know that you point them downwards and most of the
light goes where it is wanted, in an oval on the road, with some
spilling onto the close hedge beside the road for orientation.
Whatever you're talking about, Krygo, might go down well with your
claque of the thicker apprentices but not with anyone who has
experience or his brain in gear and the faintest whiff of science in
his education.

To put a finer point on it, it's better to have more
intensity closer to the horizon, to shine further down the road, and a
bit less to shine directly in front of the bike.

I want both and I get it, and enough of it with battery lights. The
point about the best and most expensive of those dynohub lights is
that none of them put out enough light. Let me repeat that: there is
no dynohub light that puts out enough light for any but the most
undemanding circumstances, like riding on the sidewalk or perhaps on
quiet, lit streets (where streetlight show you the gutter, because
most of those mickey mouse dynohub lights have a big hole in front of
the bike and zero spread of light close to the bike).

You see an example
by shining your car's or motorcycle's headlamp at a wall.

I don't have a car or a motorcycle, Krygo, and haven't since 1992. I'm
a responsible world citizen. Are you?

This optical
sophistication of a proper road light is a long way from the fuzzy
ball of light emitted by an MR bulb.

Really? On the best European cars perhaps. My memory of American cars
is that they have useless lights.

In any event, what is the relevance of car lights to bicycle lights?
This is just so much smoke. The fact remains that dynohub lamps do not
put out as much light as a suitable battery light.

And MR lamps do not emit fuzzy light when you get into the wattages I
use; you must have cheaped out with the miserable low-wattage MR
lamps, Krygo, or skimped on overvolting them, or just not understood
what you were dealing with. Or, even more despicably, you're talking
crap without any experience at all. With which of these depressing
alternatives are you wasting my time this time?

MR bulbs are designed for pattern-free illumination for overhead
projectors and for your wife's interior decorations, not for road
vehicles. No well-designed vehicle lights use them.

You cut away the bit where I said I saw MRxx auxiliary lights
certified by the TUV, the strictest of all the licensing bodies, for
use in Germany. Whether "well designed vehicles use them", meaning
cars, is an irrelevance, a smoke screen. What is relevant is that MRxx
put more light on the road than a Fly IQ, which is currently the best
of the dynohub lights.

And, of course, battery lights put the same amount of light on the
road when you're going slowly or standing still for however long.
Dynohub lights dim when you slow or die when you stop, or if fitted
with a capacitor burn for some short period of time.

Advocating them
for a bicycle - a vehicle whose reason for being is efficiency - is
silly.

Says Frank Krygowski. That's a recommendation to do the opposite of
whatever Krygo recommends -- that way you can't go wrong.

a bicycle - a vehicle whose reason for being is efficiency

Crap. The raison d'etre of bicycle is transport. What the owner uses
it for is at his own option. It is only the fascist racing faction of
cyclists who think every bicycle should be about efficiency. Thank God
they're in the minority or cycling might become really unpleasant.

Why can millions of people ride save with dynamo light sets in central
Europe but you can't?

Because their situation is different. There are more cyclists, so
drivers expect them. I am a lone cyclist in a sea of cars; no one
expects me.

The "Omigod, cycling is REALLY dangerous HERE!!!!!!" stuff gets very
tiresome.

Where did you hear "Omigod, cycling is REALLY dangerous HERE!!!!!!",
dickhead? Not from me you didn't. Again, you, Frank Krygowski, have
dishonestly cut away the context from my previous post so that you can
make a point totally at variance with what I actually said. Your
methods are puerile, Krygo; trying to make me discuss something I
neither said nor intended is a contemptibly transparent debating
trick. Shove it up your ass, sonny.

Most of my night riding is in a city and suburb where I am the lone
night cyclist. But I've just returned from a vacation to a place
where cycling (including at night) is _extremely_ popular, and I've
ridden in places that completely span those extremes.

Congratulations. So what?

With one exception, I've never been in a place where a legally lit
cyclist is not sufficiently conspicuous. I've satisfied myself
literally hundreds of times that I'm even more visible at night than I
am in daytime. (Coincidentally, a friend once told me he rides his
motorcycle only at night, for that reason.)

This is getting more and more ridiculous. Soon, dear old Krygo, you
will tell us that you feel quite safe at the new moon with a totally
dark bicycle, which of course you ride helmetless and stark naked.
Pull the other-- er, well, don't pull anything, you'll get that wrong
too, and embarrass us all.

But like most cyclists, I am comfortable enough with my daytime
visibility.

"Like most cyclists" is a statement that requires proof. And even when
you prove it, why should that have the slightest influence on me, or
anyone else who believes that it is worth going the extra half inch?
Since when is "the lowest common denominator approves" a
recommendation, or even good logic: of course the lowest common
denominator approves; that is how it became the lowest common
denominator.

As for your personal opinion, you have zero credibility with me,
Krygo. You're an idiot and a fool, and an opinionated fool at that,
which makes you dangerous to yourself and to anyone who listens to
you.

Unlike most cyclists, I've also verified my nighttime
visibility in various tests and workshops, in various street
conditions, using other motorists and cyclists as helpers.

You mean they were looking for you? That invalidates the test right
there. Why are you wasting my time with this crap, Krygo? If anyone
else put up that tacky, hollow argument, the better educated guys in
your gang would be all over him, so why do you think you'll get away
with it.

In all but
one situation, everyone participating has agreed that bog-standard
bike lights and reflectors are all that's necessary.

You must clearly value your life very little, Krygowski. Perhaps
you're right; ask your wife. You and Andreas, who wants me to lower
the value I put on my life, should get together. You'd make a fine
pair of lowballers.

The exception? Riding in heavy fog in an environment where motorists
overdrive their headlights. Sadly, you will always have a contingent
of motorists who think 70 mph on country lanes in the fog is somehow
reasonable. Thick fog is the only time I actually obey the simple-
minded advice to "ride as if I'm invisible."

You're an arrogant son of a bitch, aren't you...

:-) Unintended irony at its best!

Once again this poor dumb wannabe polemicist Frank Krygowski has cut
away my text and context to make his own utterly irrelevant hostile
point.

Here's what really went down:
Andre Jute wrote:
Because their situation [in Germany and The Netherlands} is different.
There are more cyclists, so
drivers expect them. I am a lone cyclist in a sea of cars; no one
expects me.

Andreas Oehler replied impertinently:
Maybe your behaviour or your risk perception should
be altered.

Andre Jute wrote:
You're an arrogant son of a bitch, aren't you, telling me to stay off
the roads and lower the value I put on my life and limb.

But the public laughingstock Frank Krygowski thinks that no one will
notice he hacked the context about to make his stupid little joke, and
then like a bad comedian added an unnecessary smiley and exclamation
mark to tell the whole world it is a joke, just in case they don't get
it:

You're an arrogant son of a bitch, aren't you...

:-) Unintended irony at its best!

No, Krygo, you missed the point, as you always do: a gentleman never
offends anyone unintentionally. (That sentence is ironical too, though
not in a way you will ever understand, dear Krygo.) Not just one irony
but layers of ironies were intended, and delivered, and understood
where it matters, which isn't with you. So why don't you, dear Krygo,
butt out before you become the butt of the joke.

- Frank Krygowski

Andre Jute
Who doesn't make unintentional jokes