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Red transparent tape of flashlight lens?
On Nov 17, 6:55 am, " wrote:
On Nov 16, 7:38 pm, Dan O wrote: On Nov 16, 8:18 am, " wrote: On Nov 15, 11:06 pm, Tom Sherman wrote: Frank Krygowski wrote: On Nov 15, 2:48 pm, " wrote: [...] While at the marine store today I picked up a flashing emergency light. Claimed to be visible for a mile, intended to clip to a PFG for MOB locating. It's white, so I wouldn't use it in the dark, but for rainy and foggy days like today it'll be on my jacket in addition to my tail lights. Nice, bright unit for $10. I'm glad you don't plan to use that at night. Those things are blinding and confusing for other road users. Pretty sure they're illegal, partly for those reasons. The white strobes on school buses are highly annoying. Agreed. So are strobe mode headlights. This particular light is to be used only in certain circumstances. It's visibility, annoying factor and disorientating factor will all be evaluated. I think it'll be a really good thing in heavy rain & fog. .TONIGHT...INCREASING AREAS OF FOG...LOCALLY DENSE. LOWS 35 TO 40. LIGHT WIND. .MONDAY...AREAS OF FOG IN THE MORNING...THEN BECOMING PARTLY SUNNY. HIGHS IN THE MID 50S. LIGHT WIND. Planet Bike headlight and taillight here. The whole kit cost around $50, keeps me pretty much legal, gets noticed, can go weeks or more on two AAA and two AA batteries, stows along with spare batteries in a small trunk bag pocket, and comes from a great company. We clearly have very different ideas of what is an acceptable amount of light, especially in the fog. There isn't a planet bike headlight for $50 or less, much less a combo including a taillight, that throws enough light forward to be able to ride comfortably at speed through varying terrain in the dark IMO. If you want to putter down the road @ 8MPH, or are riding through a city that’s pretty well lit up already, things are different, but when it’s _truly_ dark out all those cheap bike-specific headlights are woefully inadequate. Life is chock-full of trade-offs. Sure I'd rather have vastly better illumination ahead, and hope that someday I will, but it'll be way more costly and/or complicated than what I have now - which quite reliably gets noticed, and even does an admirable job of illuminating the fog line and most big things in the way - at extremely reasonable cost / weight / installation / maintenance. Anyway, the topic of this thread was taillights. It was pretty foggy this morning after all, and maybe almost "truly dark" [1], as well. I ride many miles on unlit rural connecting road and highway. Today, at the request of concerned others, I ran two (2) little Planet Bike taillights - one clamped to the rear rack upright,and one clipped to the tab of my messenger bag (the Pedro's messenger bag also has an exceptionally reflective stripe across the back). Even in the dense fog, my experience with the PB taillight was as usual: I could hear cars approaching from behind, suddenly slow waaaay back there as the driver apparently assessed what all that light was coming from; everybody seemed to notice me from plenty far away. [1] Even out in the country where I ride, light from the city many miles away can cast a glow into the sky, and I guess water vapor or whatever transmits some of that light down to the road. Heck, lights at the high school football field can cast a glow that illuminates the road fairly brightly a mile or more away. Rarely - if ever - is it truly dark, although it does get "quite dark" down in the trees and stuff - at which point my little Planet Bike headlight actually seems most effective. |
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