SIX thousand and FIVE hundred lumens !!!!!!!!!!

On 2018-10-06 16:03, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 07:40:47 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2018-10-05 08:33, Radey Shouman wrote:
Joerg writes:

On 2018-10-04 18:13, Radey Shouman wrote:
Joerg writes:

On 2018-10-04 14:43, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 10/4/2018 2:12 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-04 10:40, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/4/2018 11:02 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-01 15:14, wrote:
http://reviews.mtbr.com/magicshine-l...2018-interbike

The beloved Magicshine brings us what we finally need in bike lights.
Thanks to all the gods. 6500 lumens! I think you can have either
5000 or 1500 or all 6500 lumens. Thankfully now we will not only be
able to blind everyone else on the road or trail, but we can now
cause their eyeballs to burst into flames and maybe hopefully their
heads will also explode. Yeah!!!!!!


This one for their rear light is weird, quote "A sleep mode is
triggered after one minute of inaction to save power, any vibration
will immediately re-activate the unit".

So the light will go out while waiting at an intersection? Really?
Nobody raised their hand during the design review? Was there even a
design review?

First, their definition of "sleep mode" may not be "goes out." It could,
I suppose, just become much dimmer. In any case, it would be easy enough
to jiggle the bike a bit to turn it back on.


Not very smart on the part of the design engineers.


But it's probably not necessary. Ohio law specifically permits lights
that go out when the bike is stationary, ...


Not a smart decision by the lawmakers.


... and there's never been a report
of a death or serious injury caused by that feature.


Grandpa drove without a seat belt all his life and never go hurt, so ...

Grandpa also rode his bicycle without a six foot tall safety flag, a
siren, a bell constantly and automatically ringing every time he
moved, pads on his knees, pads on his elbows, body armor protecting
his spine. Why are you not using all those measures?

(Actually, maybe you are. With you, we never know.)



BTW, it even happens from the front, even by police officers:

https://fox2now.com/2018/07/30/polic...hone-in-video/


Nothing can replace bright light other than even brighter
lights. Which both of my bikes have.

Joerg, you're the master of the worldwide search for the vanishingly
rare exception. That is NOT a common crash type, as any dispassionate
search of the literature would shoe. And you have no evidence that
your daytime headlight would have prevented it.

Looks like the video has been taken down, at least fox2now.com can't
find it.


Works fine here.

Works for me now, no more "video unavailable".


... The accident happened in broad daylight, no vehicles save the
cop SUV and the cyclist visible for miles, cyclist waiting at an
intersection, I think for a stop sign. Total f*up on the part of the
cop, who was more or less apologetic. A daytime running light would not
have helped.


Not true. I clearly found that drivers notice me much better with
bright lights. Even in the corner of their eyes is enough because it
"distracts" them in a good way. All it takes is noticing a cyclist a
second or two earlier and a collision can be avoided.

Seriously? The cop would have looked up from his phone if only the
cyclist had had a light? Sounds like magic.


Easy to try. While distracted with some chore in your home, have
someone walk towards you pointing a bright but not blinding LED
flashlight. It works. A human eye is not insensitive in the directions
where one does not look, just less sensitive. The "muffling effect"
needs to be overcome and intense light is just about the only method
to achieve that.

This wasn't inside, it was outside in bright daylight, looked like
hardly a cloud in the sky.


Try this in daylight. It works.


... A really bright light is required to make much difference
in that case.


Bingo! Now you know why I have bright lights on my bikes. I experienced
it again yesterday. I had to ride through city streets for many miles,
partially at max speed. With the light fully on nobody cut into my path.
Without lights that is different.


Other clue: You are driving a car, looking ahead into traffic as you
are supposed to do. The dashboard becomes largely unnoticed except for
the occasional glance at the speedometer. However, when the yellow
check engine light, the red oil pressure light, the overtemp light or
the low fuel light comes on it is immediately noticed. Same if someone
behind you flashes their headlights even while you aren't looking into
the rear view mirror.

That only happens if you have the habit, perhaps not completely
conscious, of scanning the dashboard. How do you know it's "immediate"?
You notice it when you notice it, and if it's 10 seconds after the event
that's not a big problem, unlike the case for traffic on the road.


If bright enough or if a less bright light in flashing mode I see that
immediately. An airline pilot could even lose his license if he didn't.

If bright enough... that is exactly what I said, isn't it. But a great
many cars do not have bright warning lights.

As for airline pilots... I can't speak for the airlines but USAF
bombers have a very bright master warning light located at eye level
on the instrument panel that comes on if any of the individual warring
lights are illuminated. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annunciator_panel

"More complicated aircraft will feature "Master Warning" and "Master
Caution" lights/switches. In the event of any red or yellow
annunciator being activated, the yellow or red master light, usually
located elsewhere in the pilot's line of sight, will illuminate. In
most installations they will flash and an audible alert will accompany
them. These "masters" will not stop flashing until they have been
acknowledged, usually by pressing the light itself"


You have exactly described what I mean. My front annunciator to car
drivers is roughly in their line of sight and very bright. The rear one
isn't so bright put pulsates. Not irritatingly but gently dimming up and
down in random fashion like police cruiser lights. So even if drivers
are distracted and glancing over to a GPS screen or cell phone they
notice. Which is all I want. It works.

A small price to pay for safety. I've got less than $50 worth of
material in there and the total weight is around 1lbs due to a fairly
large Li-Ion battery. That on is only large on the road bike, for 4-5h
rides.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2018-10-06 16:06, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 08:11:56 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2018-10-05 09:51, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 7:28:43 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-04 18:13, Radey Shouman wrote:
Joerg writes:

On 2018-10-04 14:43, Radey Shouman wrote:

[...]


... The accident happened in broad daylight, no vehicles save
the cop SUV and the cyclist visible for miles, cyclist
waiting at an intersection, I think for a stop sign. Total
f*up on the part of the cop, who was more or less apologetic.
A daytime running light would not have helped.


Not true. I clearly found that drivers notice me much better
with bright lights. Even in the corner of their eyes is enough
because it "distracts" them in a good way. All it takes is
noticing a cyclist a second or two earlier and a collision can
be avoided.

Seriously? The cop would have looked up from his phone if only
the cyclist had had a light? Sounds like magic.


Easy to try. While distracted with some chore in your home, have
someone walk towards you pointing a bright but not blinding LED
flashlight. It works. A human eye is not insensitive in the
directions where one does not look, just less sensitive. The
"muffling effect" needs to be overcome and intense light is just
about the only method to achieve that.

Other clue: You are driving a car, looking ahead into traffic as
you are supposed to do. The dashboard becomes largely unnoticed
except for the occasional glance at the speedometer. However, when
the yellow check engine light, the red oil pressure light, the
overtemp light or the low fuel light comes on it is immediately
noticed. Same if someone behind you flashes their headlights even
while you aren't looking into the rear view mirror.

Yet another one: Think about the reason why approaching emergency
vehicles have very bright flashing lights.

Now imagine all of these riders with lights and sirens:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.ne...png?1428427634

This is the daily commuter traffic into downtown. Now put all those
people on the two-way cycle track on my way into work.
https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/...ansit-bend.jpg
Now live with that.


As I've written several times, bright lights are not needed on bike
paths. I turn them off there during the day. They are also not needed
when there are lots of cyclists (safety in numbers). It's different out
here, this is not Portland, Amsterdam or Copenhagen.


Solid white lights in bright sunshine are almost universally
irrelevant and annoying to other cyclists and drivers.


No, they are not. Why do you think motorcycles have mandatory DRL? Just
for fun?


... I see jerseys
and body shape long before I register the light.


That is totally contrary to my experience and that of just about anyone
I know.


... And BTW, having
driven ambulance for six years, I spent plenty of time sitting behind
cars with my deafening Federal Q2B pegged before the dopey driver
turned down the music and realized I was sitting there -- and then he
freaks out, hits the gas, goes into the intersection and gets
whacked. It can be a sh** show. Whatever giant light, siren,
calliope, marching band you claim will save your life can only make a
marginal improvement and proving that margin is hard if not
impossible, and a blinding light can cause accidents or at least
upset.


That driver shouldn't have a license.


What will really reduce accidents is being a good rider and knowing
how to ride in traffic and with entering or exiting traffic.


That's the problem. A lot of car drivers do not fall into that category
and that is beyond my influence. What I can influence is how my ship is
lit, so I do that.

No you can't. Marine vessels must adhere to very stringent
international regulations for the lights that they display and the
brightness of those lights.


I tend not to operate marine vessels on roads and bike paths. They'd get
scraped up too badly :-)

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2018-10-06 16:30, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 11:59:57 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-06 09:14, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 8:20:28 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-05 09:21, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 7:31:57 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-04 20:34, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/4/2018 3:34 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-04 12:18, jbeattie wrote:

It takes very little light to be conspicuous at
night, and it takes no additional light to be
conspicuous during the day -- assuming broad daylight
without cloud cover or other low-light condition.


My experience is clearly different.

Your experiences are almost always unique, not just
different.


Yet strangely, it jibes with that of our government folks.
Why do you think they mandate DRL on motorcycles?

And yet motorcycles are the one category of MVs in Oregon
with increasing fatality rates. e.g.
http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/loca...king-this-year






You of all people, having been an amulance driver, should know the
reason. The reason is this behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkWWVryT1UE

That is the road where I was almost clipped by a motorcyclist.
He didn't anticipate that there could be a mountain bike in a
right turn, hugged the curve at high speed and ... "GAAAH!". I
heard his engine screaming but didn't have anywhere to go
because of a wall of rock to my right. He needed the full
oncoming lane to get the situation somewhat under control.
Imagine what would have happened if there'd been oncoming
traffic.

Did you have your super-bright light on?


Of course.


... Did it prevent the motorcyclist from being an asshole? If
not, you need a much brighter light. You need the Asshole
Eliminator from Magicshine -- 60,600 lumen high rate flasher.
Run it all the time.


The light is for regular straight stretches of road, it won't help
in tight curves. Though it might cause motorists to recognize me
fractions of a second earlier.

Then why are you telling us the motorcycle story if it is not to
illustrate that bright DRLs are needed? If you just want to talk
about assholes in cars or motorcycles, that is rather mundane and has
nothing to do with lights.


sigh

I bring these examples to show just _who_ is on such roads. Drivers that
are reckless, inattentive, incompetent, slow in reaction speed, soused,
stoned, or all of the above.


And your post about being seen by on-coming, passing cars on straight
stretches, you seem to confuse being seen with playing chicken. I
ride on country roads all the time where cars in on-coming traffic
get into my lane to pass. They can see me. I'm looking right at
them. They just don't care. Being that I'm not riding a 3 ton F350, I
pull to the right. A magical light doesn't change that dynamic.


It does because I notice that with the light on fewer people attempt
such maneuvers.


I did a short ride today -- my legs are killing me, and I haven't
been off my bike for weeks. It's overcast and rained this morning. I
saw maybe thirty other cyclists on my little climbing route -- maybe
two with DRLs. No deaths to report. No breathless hysterics,
stranded people, incompetents with exploded tubeless tires. Totally
normal, at least by Portland standards, which for you might be super
scary since I'm riding on city streets at full speed! Eeek!


I hear a lot of cyclists saying the legs hurt. For me it's never the
legs, those are always fine. I run out of breath and become generally
exhausted on long hilly rides. My legs could go on another 50mi but the
rest of my body doesn't want to.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2018-10-06 16:37, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 16:30:40 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 11:59:57 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-06 09:14, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 8:20:28 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-05 09:21, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 7:31:57 AM UTC-7, Joerg
wrote:
On 2018-10-04 20:34, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/4/2018 3:34 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-04 12:18, jbeattie wrote:

It takes very little light to be conspicuous at
night, and it takes no additional light to be
conspicuous during the day -- assuming broad
daylight without cloud cover or other low-light
condition.


My experience is clearly different.

Your experiences are almost always unique, not just
different.


Yet strangely, it jibes with that of our government
folks. Why do you think they mandate DRL on motorcycles?

And yet motorcycles are the one category of MVs in Oregon
with increasing fatality rates. e.g.
http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/loca...king-this-year






You of all people, having been an amulance driver, should know the
reason. The reason is this behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkWWVryT1UE

That is the road where I was almost clipped by a
motorcyclist. He didn't anticipate that there could be a
mountain bike in a right turn, hugged the curve at high speed
and ... "GAAAH!". I heard his engine screaming but didn't
have anywhere to go because of a wall of rock to my right. He
needed the full oncoming lane to get the situation somewhat
under control. Imagine what would have happened if there'd
been oncoming traffic.

Did you have your super-bright light on?


Of course.


... Did it prevent the motorcyclist from being an asshole? If
not, you need a much brighter light. You need the Asshole
Eliminator from Magicshine -- 60,600 lumen high rate flasher.
Run it all the time.


The light is for regular straight stretches of road, it won't
help in tight curves. Though it might cause motorists to
recognize me fractions of a second earlier.

Then why are you telling us the motorcycle story if it is not to
illustrate that bright DRLs are needed? If you just want to talk
about assholes in cars or motorcycles, that is rather mundane and
has nothing to do with lights.

And your post about being seen by on-coming, passing cars on
straight stretches, you seem to confuse being seen with playing
chicken. I ride on country roads all the time where cars in
on-coming traffic get into my lane to pass. They can see me. I'm
looking right at them. They just don't care. Being that I'm not
riding a 3 ton F350, I pull to the right. A magical light doesn't
change that dynamic.

I did a short ride today -- my legs are killing me, and I haven't
been off my bike for weeks. It's overcast and rained this morning.
I saw maybe thirty other cyclists on my little climbing route --
maybe two with DRLs. No deaths to report. No breathless hysterics,
stranded people, incompetents with exploded tubeless tires. Totally
normal, at least by Portland standards, which for you might be
super scary since I'm riding on city streets at full speed! Eeek!

-- Jay Beattie.


Perhaps if you had your bent nail and rock hammer with you someone's
chain would have failed and you could have fixed it and reported the
event here.


Don't forget the steel nut. It won't work well without a steel nut.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 22:08:05 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

This doesn't work as well as it used to.
Say that you are a kid today. Good luck
getting your parents permission to destroy
your TV. Even more good look is needed for
you to put it back together. Or a modern
mower. Or a modern phone.
Or a modern whatever.

Wrong.

Repairing a car, TV, radio, mower, phone, etc.,
is much more difficult today than in 1975.
Especially if you are to destroy/disassemble
it first.

I beg to differ. I've been breaking and repairing things since I was
an infant. At first, I would take something apart to see what was
inside, and my father would patiently fix it, with me watching and
learning how it's done. One day, when I was about 13 years old, I
took apart an antique wind up clock and managed to release the main
spring. Instead of fixing it for me, I was ordered to spend about 30
minutes per evening learning to fix the clock while my father watched
and helped. I did my best but admittedly did it badly. I also
noticed that my father was sitting on his hands while watching me
work. He later explained that was to keep from strangling me as I
made mistake after mistake.

Having fixed cars, TV's, radios, mowers, phones, etc during the
1960's, I would say they somewhat easier than today's devices only in
that the parts are larger and easier to see, and that the theory of
operation was much simpler. One needs to understand how things work
before they can be repaired. To balance that, the amount of
information, videos, parts, and such available today is far more
detailed and extensive compared to the Sam's Photofacts or the Sears
parts catalog. Please find a better excuse for not taking a very
simple bicycle headlight apart.

My granddad had a professional repair shop, not
like my cloak-and-dagger stuff. At this shop,
they did absolutely *everything*. Bikes, cars,
boats, radios, phones, TVs, you name it.
Good luck finding such a shop today with
a couple of guys being able to do all that with
the usual set of everyday tools and a very
small set of machines.

Actually, I know of several. However, they don't deal with literally
everything that walks in the front door. They work out of their
garages and tend to specialize in various areas. Within the general
area where I live, we have repair "shops" for string instruments,
music keyboards, computahs, machine tools, bicycles, mechanical
clocks, etc. They're still around, but because the cost of
maintaining a walk-in store front and hiring employees is so high,
they work out of their houses. For myself, I can usually diagnose
most anything but have some difficulties fixing them. Last week was
typical with the usual computer problems, but also several smartphone
setups, three VoIP desk phones, an LCD monitor, a neighbors starter
motor, dead battery in a customers car, plug a flat tire in the
building managers car, LiIon battery charger repair, weather station
(not fixed), AIO laser printer teardown to fix a gear jam, two router
firmware upgrades, reset and reprogram a Roku media player, etc. This
is typical for about one week. Most important tools used were my
brain and Google search.

Is have visited this shop and organized it,
cleaned every tool, thrown away garbage, and
all. What remains is good stuff, but still just
the common stuff. Except for the electronics
stuff, which I know nothing about, we had
pretty much the same gear, him and I. The only
thing he had that I didn't were a bunch of
impact drivers. Other that that there were just
sockets, combination spanners, different types
of hammers, and so on. And with this, he solved
problems in a range that's unthinkable today.

Nice. There's another difference. He had years of experience, while
you seem to be limiting yourself to what you can learn from a garage
full of old bicycles and parts. That works, to a point, but I think
you will do much better either working for someone else in order to
learn the trade, or working on a better class of bicycle. For bicycle
lighting, there is a difference between cheap junk and a light
designed specifically for a type of bicycle riding. Or, perhaps
building a clone of a high end bicycle light might be ummm...
enlightening. You can buy all the components on eBay. Never mind
what it looks like, build it in a wooden box. All you care about is
how the light works and how long it will run on your selected battery.
You'll learn quite a bit about electronics doing the calculations,
building the light, and measuring the results. In order to buy the
optics, you'll need to understand lumens, lux, and candelas, which
should be a suitable incentive.

Also, one other minor thing. When someone takes the time to explain
how something works, I suggest you not repackage what they provided
and ask them if that's is what they meant. Doing that is a trick that
students sometimes do to reverse the situation on their instructors.
Instead of the instructor asking questions, and the student providing
an explanation or answer, the student ask the instructor the same
question repackaged, and in effect tests if the instructor understands
the question. The process does not demonstrate that you've learned
anything more than rearranging a question. If you want to test your
understanding, contrive a real life and very different situation
involving the same principles and then ask if you are doing the
calculations correctly.

Good luck.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On 10/7/2018 11:46 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 22:08:05 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

This doesn't work as well as it used to.
Say that you are a kid today. Good luck
getting your parents permission to destroy
your TV. Even more good look is needed for
you to put it back together. Or a modern
mower. Or a modern phone.
Or a modern whatever.

Wrong.

Repairing a car, TV, radio, mower, phone, etc.,
is much more difficult today than in 1975.
Especially if you are to destroy/disassemble
it first.

I beg to differ. I've been breaking and repairing things since I was
an infant. At first, I would take something apart to see what was
inside, and my father would patiently fix it, with me watching and
learning how it's done. One day, when I was about 13 years old, I
took apart an antique wind up clock and managed to release the main
spring. Instead of fixing it for me, I was ordered to spend about 30
minutes per evening learning to fix the clock while my father watched
and helped. I did my best but admittedly did it badly. I also
noticed that my father was sitting on his hands while watching me
work. He later explained that was to keep from strangling me as I
made mistake after mistake.

Having fixed cars, TV's, radios, mowers, phones, etc during the
1960's, I would say they somewhat easier than today's devices only in
that the parts are larger and easier to see, and that the theory of
operation was much simpler. One needs to understand how things work
before they can be repaired. To balance that, the amount of
information, videos, parts, and such available today is far more
detailed and extensive compared to the Sam's Photofacts or the Sears
parts catalog. Please find a better excuse for not taking a very
simple bicycle headlight apart.

My granddad had a professional repair shop, not
like my cloak-and-dagger stuff. At this shop,
they did absolutely *everything*. Bikes, cars,
boats, radios, phones, TVs, you name it.
Good luck finding such a shop today with
a couple of guys being able to do all that with
the usual set of everyday tools and a very
small set of machines.

Actually, I know of several. However, they don't deal with literally
everything that walks in the front door. They work out of their
garages and tend to specialize in various areas. Within the general
area where I live, we have repair "shops" for string instruments,
music keyboards, computahs, machine tools, bicycles, mechanical
clocks, etc. They're still around, but because the cost of
maintaining a walk-in store front and hiring employees is so high,
they work out of their houses. For myself, I can usually diagnose
most anything but have some difficulties fixing them. Last week was
typical with the usual computer problems, but also several smartphone
setups, three VoIP desk phones, an LCD monitor, a neighbors starter
motor, dead battery in a customers car, plug a flat tire in the
building managers car, LiIon battery charger repair, weather station
(not fixed), AIO laser printer teardown to fix a gear jam, two router
firmware upgrades, reset and reprogram a Roku media player, etc. This
is typical for about one week. Most important tools used were my
brain and Google search.

Is have visited this shop and organized it,
cleaned every tool, thrown away garbage, and
all. What remains is good stuff, but still just
the common stuff. Except for the electronics
stuff, which I know nothing about, we had
pretty much the same gear, him and I. The only
thing he had that I didn't were a bunch of
impact drivers. Other that that there were just
sockets, combination spanners, different types
of hammers, and so on. And with this, he solved
problems in a range that's unthinkable today.

Nice. There's another difference. He had years of experience, while
you seem to be limiting yourself to what you can learn from a garage
full of old bicycles and parts. That works, to a point, but I think
you will do much better either working for someone else in order to
learn the trade, or working on a better class of bicycle. For bicycle
lighting, there is a difference between cheap junk and a light
designed specifically for a type of bicycle riding. Or, perhaps
building a clone of a high end bicycle light might be ummm...
enlightening. You can buy all the components on eBay. Never mind
what it looks like, build it in a wooden box. All you care about is
how the light works and how long it will run on your selected battery.
You'll learn quite a bit about electronics doing the calculations,
building the light, and measuring the results. In order to buy the
optics, you'll need to understand lumens, lux, and candelas, which
should be a suitable incentive.

Also, one other minor thing. When someone takes the time to explain
how something works, I suggest you not repackage what they provided
and ask them if that's is what they meant. Doing that is a trick that
students sometimes do to reverse the situation on their instructors.
Instead of the instructor asking questions, and the student providing
an explanation or answer, the student ask the instructor the same
question repackaged, and in effect tests if the instructor understands
the question. The process does not demonstrate that you've learned
anything more than rearranging a question. If you want to test your
understanding, contrive a real life and very different situation
involving the same principles and then ask if you are doing the
calculations correctly.

Good luck.



+1 for documentation and youtube which make this all much
less black art than it once was.

At one time, an auto repair for girlfriend/neighbor (that
is, for an unfamiliar vehicle) started with a tour of used
bookstores for a manual. In 2018, my employee was outside
bitching and moaning that a dead part on his Toyota was
unreachable while I found a youtube video, walked outside
and pulled the 'hidden' release panel.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Sepp Ruf wrote:
Oculus Lights wrote:

[shameless Barry Beams plug]

In other Barry Burr news, the absolute priority having two customers on
Amazon is ... to make sure I call 50% of them a "douche bag" ...
https://www.amazon.com/sp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B018797NI2&isAmazonFulfille d=0&isCBA=&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&orderID=&se ller=A3BDW30AECO8UD


Two observations here.

1) Engineering and Customer Service are two very different fields and
require totally different skill sets. Not many people are successful in
both simultaneously.

2) You can't do what Barry has done without being a wee bit obsessed about
your quest (ref Doug Cimperman and bike tires). This obsession towards
building "the best bike light ever" doesn't help him much when he has to
deal with dissatisfied customers who don't share his vision.

From a business point of view, the non-intuitive truth is that Barry could
probably achieve higher market penetration by selling out to a company that
actually cares less about high quality bicycle lighting.

On 10/6/2018 2:49 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-06 08:38, Frank Krygowski wrote:

[...]


Why on earth does someone riding a two lane highway with no
intersections think they have to have a white light facing forward? It's
a paranoia.


Simple:

1. It prevents a large vehicle driver from overtake another large
vehicle and then the driver seeing the cyclist when it's too late.

I have other ways of preventing that horrible, tragic event. One of them
is riding in the real world, not the fantasy "worst case scenario" world.

It's not that I've _never_ had an oncoming motorist pull out to pass. It
has happened perhaps two times in over 40 years of riding. And I've
never had to leave the pavement to avoid tragedy. Hell, I've never even
had to move onto the shoulder.

2. It causes oncoming motorists to see the cyclist much earlier and, for
example, if a big semi comes they can pull a bit to the right so the
semi can give the cyclist wide berth.

I do NOT believe any practical light allows a motorist to see a cyclist
_much_ earlier. In almost every case, I've seen on-road cyclists before
I noticed that they had a light. And in no case did I see the light
early enough to make any practical difference. You're fixating on a
superstitious talisman, imagining benefits that don't exist in real life.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 10/7/2018 10:54 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-06 16:03, John B. Slocomb wrote:

A small price to pay for safety.

EVERY superstitious "safety!" gizmo is touted as "a small price to pay
for safety." That's been said of bike helmets, hi-viz clothing, daytime
running lights, air horns on bikes, six-foot tall flippy flags, lateral
flippy flags, leg lights, laser-projected bike lane markings, elbow pads
and knee pads, bike turn signals and more.

Meanwhile, study after study has shown that the benefits of bicyclng
greatly outweigh its tiny risks. IOW, riding a bike is literally safer
than NOT riding a bike.

I wish you'd switch to burdening pedestrians with your crazy "safety"
ideas. 4500 fatalities per year. Something must be done! And you can
make a profit by selling them junk!

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 12:02:25 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/6/2018 2:49 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-10-06 08:38, Frank Krygowski wrote:

[...]


Why on earth does someone riding a two lane highway with no
intersections think they have to have a white light facing forward? It's
a paranoia.


Simple:

1. It prevents a large vehicle driver from overtake another large
vehicle and then the driver seeing the cyclist when it's too late.

I have other ways of preventing that horrible, tragic event. One of them
is riding in the real world, not the fantasy "worst case scenario" world.

It's not that I've _never_ had an oncoming motorist pull out to pass. It
has happened perhaps two times in over 40 years of riding. And I've
never had to leave the pavement to avoid tragedy. Hell, I've never even
had to move onto the shoulder.

2. It causes oncoming motorists to see the cyclist much earlier and, for
example, if a big semi comes they can pull a bit to the right so the
semi can give the cyclist wide berth.

I do NOT believe any practical light allows a motorist to see a cyclist
_much_ earlier. In almost every case, I've seen on-road cyclists before
I noticed that they had a light. And in no case did I see the light
early enough to make any practical difference. You're fixating on a
superstitious talisman, imagining benefits that don't exist in real life.

The dopey part is thinking that motorists behave badly because they don't see cyclists. When a car right hooks you after passing on a bright sunny day, it's not because the motorist didn't see you. It's because he or she is an asshole. Buses and trucks pass me too closely all the time and not because they can't see me. On coming cars get into my lane to pass, and I know they see me because I'm glowering at them. I make eye contact. What I need is a handgun and not a bright light.

Joerg believes that a bright light on a sunny day not only increases his conspicuity -- which it might, but probably not in any meaningful way -- but produces freakish compliance and passivity from motorists. Semi drivers pull right to give him more room in the opposite lane (which they wouldn't do for a car with its lights on) and oncoming cars refrain from passing. None of this behavior -- if it occurs -- can possibly be tied to having a bicycle light on a sunny day, at least not without stopping the semi-driver or car-that-didn't-pass and asking them why they did what they did when they did it.

I know that bad behavior is not eliminated by bright lights because I get plenty of it with my lights on.

And on top of that, there is the usual confirmation bias. I was riding yesterday in overcast after a downpour. I had cars entering from the right -- I got out in the lane in my fluorescent Gabba jacket, and the cars didn't pull out. I know for certain that it was because of my jacket. How could you not see that jacket -- it's like a yellow-green road flare. OTOH, the motorists may have seen a 6'3" 200lb guy on a bike who was riding in the middle of the lane in adequate light to be easily seen. But being that I own the jacket, I'll claim it saved me. I also had a front headlight, but it wasn't on.

I've decided to take a day off. I'm going for a walk with my wife.

-- Jay Beattie.