Bright lights are fine but no need to have them angled up and aimed directly at drivers eyes, angled down slightly is perfectly fine.

and

Also tilted down to some degree.

If you’re using proper MTB lights, they totally unfocussed way they throw as much light up as well as down and sideways mean you really need to point them down a significant amount.

I’m surprised the manufactures haven’t cottoned on to this actually, why waste those lumens illuminating 50 feet up in the air when a bit of shape to the lenses could improve the forward light even more.

I’m surprised the manufactures haven’t cottoned on to this actually, why waste those lumens illuminating 50 feet up in the air when a bit of shape to the lenses could improve the forward light even more.

Because when you’re doing off-road night riding, you’re still relying a lot on peripheral vision so some designed-in and defined “spill” of the lights is actually quite desirable.

On-road you want a more focussed beam that illuminates the road ahead but still retains good visibility from the sides and it’s quite easy to do that with wrap-around car headlights, much more difficult with bike lights where things like weight, size and run-time come into the equation.

it’s why i don’t bother with lights at all and just ride everywhere on the pavement, wearing all black and doing a wheelie.

Those who say they can’t see flashing lights properly when driving, either –
1. are lying, or
2. shouldn’t be driving

Flashing rear lights on my bike and my helmet. Because they absolutely shout “BIKE!” And its really obvious hundreds of meters down the road. Static lights just look like another cars brake lights, especially as the usual size and height make them hard to judge range.

Flashing front lights are a pain though. The flashes are juat too bright.

it’s why i don’t bother with lights at all and just ride everywhere on the pavement, wearing all black and doing a wheelie.

Scientifically proven to be the most effective aid to visibility ever. In fact, not only does *everyone* see you, they write letters to the local paper / post on the local community facebook page to tell everyone else how they saw you!

One of the many powers of Schroedingers Cyclist. Simultaneously completely invisible (“appearing from nowhere”) yet can be seen from miles off while wearing all black.
So fast they speed past traffic in 20mph zones but so slow there are queues of traffic behind them. Silently zooming around while at the same time shouting obscenities to all and sundry around them.

There’s never an in-between is there? It’s either lights that are blinding and dazzling or “dressed all in black with no lights”. There’s never a kind of Goldilocks cyclist which is “just the right sort of visibility”. 😉

I’ve had this.

Them: “Oi, mate! You’re breaking the law with those lights!”

Me: “Oh, which law exactly?”

Them: “…”

In the last week I’ve had both ‘Exposure 6-Pack moron’ and massively bright random flashing monster LED dick cyclists riding towards me on relatively well lit west London roads.
Just don’t **** do it.
As a car driver as well massive bright lights destroy anyone else’s ability to judge where that light source is relative to the viewer. Increasing your risk of colliding.

@thew

If you’re using proper MTB lights

My (off-road) Exposure lights are only used off road. Totally inappropriate for road use obvs.

Small 2032 button celled LED lights for road use, front and rear.

Static lights just look like another cars brake lights

or motorbike, exactly why I only use static lights now; at night cars actually give way at junctions and don’t assume they can squeeze past on overtakes, precisely because they think you might be a bigger vehicle. Flashing lights make it obvious you are a cyclist – and we all know what other road users think of cyclists… Flashing was also introduced as a battery saving method but this is largely irrelevant now.

Those who say they can’t see flashing lights properly when driving, either –

Depends what you mean by properly. It’s be proven pretty consistently that blinking or flashing lights are more difficult for the human optical system to judge speed direction and ‘depth’.

Personally I think that depending on where you are using the lights makes a huge difference. My commute is 2/3’s on unlit paths and roads with the other 1/3 on lit cycle paths so I use a solid front and rear light. I get those in urban areas using flashing lights but on unlit paths they are so hard to see past we’ll expect for the ones you can hardly see as the batteries have just about died. The low powered ones that are meant as be seen lights are fine, great even but high powered ones flashing in complete darkness is a big no for me.

3 lights at either end for me.

Strada on the bars, usually set to medium until I’m out in the countryside.

Axis or joystick on the lid with a micro red eye on the back. Flashing for urban, steady for suburban/rural.

Exposure TraceR on solid for the rear.

Then a pair of Knog COB Blinders front and rear on gentle flash.

Any mention of biscuits yet?

Being able to dip your front lights helps. Mine are on a go-pro type mount, which helps.

It’s good to have a flashing white light on the front of your bike helmet, if only to alert pedestrians, stepping out between parked cars.

And a flashing red light on the rear of your bike helmet is a good idea.

Wasnt there a study done which found that its not the amount of day-glo and reflectives that counts, but where it positioned and whether it moves (pedal reflectors!)

Yeah bio-motion I think is the fancy term for it.

Patches of reflective tape on the crankarms works well for that, if your pedals don’t have reflectors.

wrong thread

Because when you’re doing off-road night riding, you’re still relying a lot on peripheral vision so some designed-in and defined “spill” of the lights is actually quite desirable.

Sideway and down towards your wheel, absolutely. Well up onto the trees, nah, I’m not having that.

Anyway, off topic sorry. Back to the thread…..

All this talk of angling lights downwards etc. it has concerned me for a while now that I have to purposefully point my light towards the ground to avoid blinding oncoming cars or pedestrians.

My current bike light has started behaving a bit erratically, so I’ve been looking at replacements.

I’ve looked in the past at the B&M Ixon lights that meet the STVZO German requirements, but there are mixed reviews on how bright they are for unlit country road riding – I don’t want to fork out a lot of money for a bike light & then find it’s actually not bright enough.

I’ve recently been looking at the Ravemen PR1600 light. It’s got 2 LEDs, one of which has a cut-off beam pattern. I don’t think it officially meets the STVZO standard, but looks very good when compared to a traditional ‘conical’ beam pattern.
It’s probably more than I really want to spend on a bike light, given that similar brightness lights can probably be had for half the price of the Ravemen. But, it can also be used off-road & I think I’ll feel like less of a knob on the road than if I just bought a £30 Amazon 3000 lumen monster light.

https://www.ravemen.com/product/PR1600.html

On the rear light issue – I always use two. I’ve got a Moon Pulsar rear light with very good battery life (it takes AAA batteries) and leave it on constant, coupled with a Exposure Tracer light which I put on pulsing mode. If I’m out in the daytime I’ll put it on the brightest setting, but at night time I normally change that to the lowest & it is still ridiculously bright.

Depends how steep the trail your riding olly.

Up isn’t always up.

Thought about a dynamo stumpy?

I’ve got a dynamo on my commuter / light off roader and its fantastic. The beam shape doesn’t blind drivers, the lights are always on (with a daylight mode / off button), and they’re plenty bright.

FWIW, i Use a B&M IQ-X, but there are brighter lights out there if needs be.

Have we done only light being

Headmounted “light of a thousand suns”

No lights because they’re looking the other way then the get you right in the face and you see nothing but splodges for a week.

the regs are still stuck in the past and refer to things like “candelas” of brightness and obsolete…

But a candela is the right SI unit for how bright/visible a light will be to the observer. Lumens are just marketing spin by manufacturers / lazy engineers who quote the LED spec rather than consider the actual output.

Iqx is plenty bright for unlit cycle path

Dynamo lights are the tits for commuting.

apedoctor

Member
Thought about a dynamo stumpy?

Nope. I haven’t really given a dynamo any thought.
I would do if it was for a commuter bike, but I’d need a dynamo hub etc. and the costs would soon rack up.
I also want something that can be swapped between bikes – that’s the good thing about that Ravemen light – I can use it one day on the road bike & the next day on the mountain bike.

trail_rat

Member
Iqx is plenty bright for unlit cycle path

Yeah, I really like the look of the B&M lights. I’ve considered the IXON IQ Premium (battery powered), but would really like to see one in real life before committing.
They also do the IXON Speed Premium, which is brighter but uses a separate battery – I’d prefer to have an all in one light and the light mounting method looks a bit strange.
Then there’s the IXON Space, which is almost twice as bright as the IQ Premium (150 Lux, compared to 80 Lux) but that is gonna cost about £140, has a specific road beam (rather than the dual LED option of the Ravemen light) and I’m a bit wary of the touch control settings, which I can imagine might be a pain with thick gloves on, or when wet….?

Given a money no object approach, I’d probably get the IXON Space for the road & an Exposure something or other for off-road. But, that ain’t happening any time soon! 🙂

I have a revo and an iqx.

The Revo is shit on road .

The revos not great off roadat speed the iqx is better

The Revo is better at low speed speed though which is why it wins for off-road.

I’ve recently been looking at the Ravemen PR1600 light. It’s got 2 LEDs, one of which has a cut-off beam pattern. I don’t think it officially meets the STVZO standard, but looks very good when compared to a traditional ‘conical’ beam pattern.

Exposure actually now produces several STZVO spec lights:

https://exposurelights.com/products/bike/stvzo-lights

I run a Strada for pure road use, but angled down and to the lefthand kerb slightly. It’s not perfect, but the beam pattern is ovalised and you can also change modes with a remote switch. I also havve a Supernova Airstream, which is proper STVZO with a defined cut-off which I run alongside my off-road lights for rides where I find myself on the road for longer than a minute or so when the off-road Lumicycle lights get switched off.

I get that people don’t want to buy road-specific lights, but it’s all about consideration for other road users – including cyclists.

Rode into work this morning with Diablo in the helmet angled down and to the kerb on the 8hr setting so not bright.

Flashing cats eye on the back.

Lumo drybag rucksack.

Granted the Diablo can be overkill but I turn my head away whenever opposite traffic is there. My commute is country lanes with no urban. Never had a problem with anyone complaining.

Nearly every bike I see is technically not legal as they don’t have amber reflectors on the pedals. Does anybody know of a way of putting reflectors on modern flats?

Loving Crazy-legs’ work.

I’m surprised the manufactures haven’t cottoned on to this actually, why waste those lumens illuminating 50 feet up in the air when a bit of shape to the lenses could improve the forward light even more.

+1

I’m a recent convert to dynamos and STVZO lights. Takes a bit of care to angle it correctly but for an actual 290lumen output, it puts as much light on the road ahead as most 2000luemen MTB lights.

On-road you want a more focussed beam that illuminates the road ahead but still retains good visibility from the sides and it’s quite easy to do that with wrap-around car headlights, much more difficult with bike lights where things like weight, size and run-time come into the equation.

Not really, my dynamo light has cutouts on either side to allow light to spill out and gives sideways visibility.

I went out for a ride on the road last night with a new light, the commuter ones currently in Aldi. It was damright scary after a few months with they dynamo. It’s not just the cut off that makes STVZO so great it’s the way the lights aimed below that. It’s brightest just below the cutoff so when pointed down the road it’s lit evenly a long way ahead. Going back to the normal “conical beam with a bit of a spot” you get a lot of light on the front wheel because it’s close. A lot of light 10m up the road where the spots is aimed, then nothing. It was no better on max brightness than it was on minimum, all that happened is you lost even more peripheral vision or sensitivity (which you needed to spot corners coming up as the light was doing sod all).

So it’s not just that the dynamo saves you 80% of the light, it’s also making that 20% work a lot better.

Now I need to decide whether to get a dynamo for my road bike. There are a few battery options, Exposure Strada isn’t STVZO but is at least aimed to mimic a cars a main beam, but is £160-£300 depending on battery options. Lezyne do a STVZO head unit that looks like it might play nicely with standard 8.4V batteries. What would be good is a way to hard wire that and a normal MTB light into a SPDT switch for a high beam/low beam setup. But most light switch off if you remove the power.

t’s be proven pretty consistently that blinking or flashing lights are more difficult for the human optical system to judge speed direction and ‘depth’.

So what you’re saying is, people who can’t judge the distance of a bike light ahead of them just drive into it? Or they don’t think “I can’t tell how far away that is, I’ll slow down until I can and ensure I avoid it”.
And this is a problem with the lights?

Nearly every bike I see is technically not legal as they don’t have amber reflectors on the pedals. Does anybody know of a way of putting reflectors on modern flats?

Go one rung down the ladder from hope etc to pedals like the wellgo MG-1, then they’re still tall enough to mount standard pedal reflectors. There’s no way you;d get them on low profile pedals though.

Exposure actually now produces several STZVO spec lights:

1000 lumen STVZO lights, holly moly!

It does also depend on the riding you do. Urban, country, quiet lanes, fast busy roads

My commute is from North to Central London. No roads faster than 30mph, and I take a few unlit tracks and paths when possible, just because it makes a nice change

I could just about make out a cyclist yesterday, they had a solid beam light on the front but a car behind with bright lights, the cyclist got drowned out. A flashing light might have helped make them more obvious

But yes, bright flashing lights are really annoying (and I am guilty of being that bloke too in the past)

I run an Exposure Strada on the bars and an Exposure Joystick (or sometimes a Diablo) on my helmet, with a micro red eye in the back. Usually prefer the Joystick on the road as it’s spottier. I run one in steady and one in pulse, usually put the helmet in pulse because I can aim it and i find that more useful (at drivers coming from into my road, into cars when I might be near there blindspot etc). Always have a flashing and solid rear light. Personally, I find reflective stuff to be a winner – things like reflective ankle straps, which I use a lot

Because when you’re doing off-road night riding, you’re still relying a lot on peripheral vision so some designed-in and defined “spill” of the lights is actually quite desirable.

Sideway and down towards your wheel, absolutely. Well up onto the trees, nah, I’m not having that.

There are a few reasons that it’s useful to have some illumination going upwards in front of you:

Navigation off road – often relies on more than just following the track ahead of you.

Being aware of overhanging branches, or protruding growths.

Looking for owls and bats.

😁

BadlyWiredDog

Exposure actually now produces several STZVO spec lights:

True, but the cheapest one is £245 which is a bit too fruity for me.
I could get 2 IXON IQ Premiums with decent rechargeable batteries & still have £130 to spare.
Or the Ixon Space & £100 left over.
I’m sure they’re good lights, but I don’t have that sort of money to spend on one. The thought of forking out £130 for the Ravemen PR1600 is making me wince!

Are the Exposure ones actually available yet? Shops seem to be selling them, but the Exposure website says “available soon” and all the values are TBC. Perhaps someone’s forgotten to update the page!

thisisnotaspoon

I’m surprised the manufactures haven’t cottoned on to this actually, why waste those lumens illuminating 50 feet up in the air when a bit of shape to the lenses could improve the forward light even more.

I suspect it’s because of the development cost/tooling cost of a bespoke lens/reflector design. A conical reflector is massively simple by comparison & are probably just nicked from other light products like torches etc.

I am a cyclist, car driver and motorcycle rider so can appreciate all perspectives.

It’s good to be seen, but blinding and confusing oncoming drivers is self defeating. Somewhat counter-intuitively it makes it harder to see exactly where you are, and temporarily blinds any driver to the extent that they might actually hit you despite being only too aware that you are there or something/somebody else.

Regardless of the letter of the law, what really matters is safety. In the event of an accident car trumps motorbike and bike, and motorbike trumps bike. That’s an inconvenient truth and arguing the legality of your point of view from a hospital bed (or worse) is something of a moot point. In a collision between pretty much any other form of transport on the road and a bike, the bike usually comes off worse.

So it is in our interests to be seen, but not to be anti-social and potentially unintentionally more dangerous by temporarily blinding people.

Let’s just all get along……

I recently bought (had to get from Germany) an IXON Space in preparation for commuting through the darker months. Not had the chance to use them for real yet but the ‘shine around the garden’ test shows a very defined cut off line. Liked the ability to vary the output as my commute will involve a variety of town, lit road and completely unlit country B road. It also seems a lot brighter than the Phillips Saferide (also STVZO compliant) that I have used previously. To be STVZO compliant the light must be constant (no flash mode) is my understanding.
I will be using the IXON in conjunction with a Fly12 camera/light combo with the light set in irregular flash mode. Use a similar approach at the rear, one light constant and one flashing (not a strobe level output). Never had any abuse (regarding the lights anyway) from motorists or other cyclists.
Regarding BS standards is it true that a light compliant in one EU country (ie German STVZO) is also compliant in all the others. Dont want to turn this into a ‘B’ debate!

Ah, yes a good old seasonal bicycle lights thread…

This is the key bit IMO:

must be marked as conforming to BS3648, or BS6102/3, or an equivalent EC standard. If capable of emitting only a flashing light, it must emit at least 4 candelas.

The light I had on the back of my bike this morning has a CE mark (I just checked) which means it must comply with either BS3648, BS6102/3 or another European equivalent so it’s “legal”…

It’s got a flashy mode (which I’ll only use during daylight hours and a steady mode which I’ll use if it’s dark… The blinky mode is probably above 4 candela the lack of a maximum is concerning but the rules only state a minimum.

TBH super bright flashing lights are a stupid choice for anyone who claims they’re trying to be seen a steady light is a nice fixed reference point for a driver, a franticly flashing blinding death ray doesn’t help drivers to know where you are at all.

As a general rule I will always have a steady light on the bike and if I have a second blinky one, it will be weaker and probably on the back of my helmet as a small up high “attention grabber” so they can see there’s something there from a bit further back…

so lighting is all good, but let’s not talk about reflectors shall we?… 😉