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news
Bristol sofa flashing light message (cropped, picture courtesy Steven Russell).PNGBizarre rant against flashing front bike lights scrawled on abandoned sofa in Bristol
Flashing front lights, like helmets, team kit or which groupset to use, is one of those subjects that polarises opinion among cyclists. Some swear by them, others insist you should only use a solid beam. But one Bristol resident – it’s not clear whether he or she rides a bike – is seriously agitated by them, and scrawled a message on an abandoned sofa to let the world know just how much.
The message, written on the underside of the sofa, reads “Cyclists of Bristol pls may you turn your over bright lights down + stop them flashing it hurts my eyes. Ta. Anon BS7” and was spotted by cyclist Steven Russell.
He told road.cc: “I found it odd, for obvious reasons … and luckily for the author there was a fly-tipped sofa lying around just when they needed one. Unless they brought it from home.
“But I saw it out of the corner of my eye and was the only cyclist to stop (at least in those 5 minutes) and actually read it.
“Whilst the medium of the message may be odd, the message is a valid one.
“So I was bemused and pleased at the same time!”
Steven, it turns out, falls into the camp of cyclists who prefer to use a solid beam.
“I don’t actually use flashing lights, largely because I don’t like them on other cyclists coming towards me,” he explained.
“They’re not ideal for the darker segregated cycle lanes I use in North Bristol, where they can easily dazzle you.
“In truth, I don’t think they are ideal for road cycling either.
“Cars don’t have flashing headlights and, in striving where I can to inhabit the road much as a car would (taking the lane, signalling, obeying traffic lights etc., for the safety of all), I won’t use flashing lights either,” he added.
We know plenty of cyclists who feel the same, but equally many others will always have their light in flashing mode, and pretty much most front lights we see nowadays have at least one of those.
Some switch between the two – for instance, a flashing light can be particularly useful when riding down a country lane at dusk and can warn drivers behind you of your presence due to the pulsing reflection of the beam off road signs.
Where many cyclists find them especially annoying is not when they are used on the public highway, but on separate cycling infrastructure – it’s easy to have your vision temporarily wrecked by a flashing light coming towards you.
One solution is to angle the light slightly downwards so they aren’t shining straight at people – but that gives rise to perhaps one of the biggest problems some people find with them.
That’s where the light comes with a basic O-ring mount, making the light liable to tilt up or down when you hit a bump on the road – and a surprisingly large number of even mid-to-high-end lights have exactly those mounts, something for brands asking what can be considerable sums for their products to address, perhaps?
Where do you stand on the issue? Let us know in the comments below.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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75 comments
Traveling in traffic in London on dark evenings I regard flashing lights as essential to enable cards looking in their rear view mirror to distinguish bicycles from other queueing motor traffic. This is my opinion from sitting in the driving seat of a car...
Says something about how well our democracy works that people consider writing things on old sofas to be more useful than writing to their MP.
What does one have to do to get banned? Not wear a helmet?
Pretty sure SP59 got banhammered. Here's a thread where we clashed on Owain Doull - only my first post from our exchange remains. It appears his historic comments have gone to Valhalla...
http://road.cc/content/news/218010-video-team-skys-owain-doull-says-disc...
He posted something tinfoil-hatty the other day on a thread about Westminster Bridge and that car nutter and Leviathan had a go at him. Next thing is its comments have decreased by half and I haven't seen him since. Harsh.
superpython95 will be sorely missed - he was an institution
(albeit one somewhat akin to a 19th century insane asylum)
@unconstituted: My thoughts exactly. Was a weird post to be banned for, IIRC.
I for one hope he is allowed back, and am very sad that he has been removed. I may not have always agreed with him but I read all he had to say and looked forward to his eloquent outrage.
It's very difficult to see you in the daylight unless you have extremely good front lights so flashing is a must. Bontreager have just released a version of an led daytime running light that may help. My rear is always flashing, sometimes I have 2 flashing on the front when I'm out at 5am in London. As long as you don't harm or blind anyone then I think it's better to be on the safe side!
You can never win, when I ride home on my mountain bike along some country roads, I turn my lights down to minimum setting, I can hardly see the road and they are angled down to illuminate about 2-5 m's in front of me. Yet I have had cars come to a complete stop when coming the other way.
I have even had a driver complain at me, despite him driving through a village with street lighting, his lights on main beam & fog lights on. My response to him was 'did you see me', he said 'yes', I replied 'they did their job then'. You can't cater for all idiots.
I have stopped using the flash function at night on the road, as I have found that a number of drivers will give way to you if they do not know you are a cyclist, as soon as you use the flash mode they know you are a cyclist and will then treat you as such (i.e. not give you time or space). The only time I will use flash mode is during inclement conditions (heavy rain of fog) during daytime. Also there is no need to have flashing lights on off road tracks or cycleways.
When I am driving I prefer to see cyclists with bright lights & never had an issue with them solid or flashing.
Been told by drivers in the past that they find the flashing lights easier to see.
Nevertheless, I prefer to have one flashing, one solid.
By 'flashing' I mean not those horrible disco lights which do my head in.
Whatever light programme you use just angle the beam below the horizontal. It's never a good idea to blind oncoming car drivers. Can't really blame drivers if you're the one who blinded them.
You should have a set of flashing lights and a set of constant lights - one to get noticed, one so drivers can judge distance more easily.
I don't think it's an MP that's causing the annoyance
Is it that different from the 'please slow down' signs on wheelie bins?
It was a combination of not wearing a helmet, using a mix of rim and disc brakes on the same wheel, putting di2 on a single-speed and fixing carrier bags to his handlebars in lieu of panniers.
Oh, and colourful socks as well.
That is harsh, especially considering certain members here intentionally jump into new articles and try to bait him and not in a good humoured way. You actually deal with him appropriately, with humour and reasoning. And that's all he needs, he's not a bad guy and he's not a troll, something that gets bandied around now that it's become meaningless. If Python's aggressive recently it's because he has a few passive aggressive types who're always on his nuts, and they're calling him all sorts of shit and getting away with it. They can't just have their say, they have to follow him around, thread to thread sniping at him.
Why don't the mods pull those guys off the site too. They're as tedious as they are unhappy with themselves clearly.
I don't get the logic for it. It's possible that his post was offensive and inappropriate for a commercial site, and that it just washed over me. But it wasn't an explosion, ad-hommy or profane - not like that DM guy over Brexit.
I think it's more that mods have had their eye on someone... I wonder whether they issue warnings. I wasn't happy when Willo got chopped - he was a pain in the arse but it was more interesting with him around, and I was as bad as him for rowing BTL, just more in keeping with the prevalent viewpoints on here.
This clearly demonstrates the point I made earlier about the importance of beam pattern. It doesn't matter where you point a bright light with an unsuitable-for-road beam pattern - it will still dazzle people.
I highly recommend to people that you try leaning your bike against a wall, then walking away and looking at it to see what it's like from someone else's perspective. It may surprise you. Having tried this with my cheap e-bay special, I took to shielding it with my hand with oncoming traffic (when hand was available) until I found a light with a better road beam.
We need more lights available at a sensible price with a sensible (clear cut-off line running horizontally, above which little light is directed) beam pattern. I know that for MTB, such lights are not sufficient however - they don't pick out overhanging branches etc, so you need an additional easily-switchable light or beam equivalent to main beam on a motor vehicle.
But in the daylight we already have this huge light source called "the sun" which I find is usually sufficient to see and be seen by. I never put lights on during daylight hours unless it's foggy or raining.
I don't agree with him being banned (I'm biased as I agree with much of what he writes)... but you can see road.cc's point of view: they don't want to spend all their time banning and un-banning people when they could be out riding the review bicycles.
I think people are missing the point of super bright front lights.
I've got a few varieties of chinese made front lights with increasingly powerful lumen claims (e.g. 3000 lumens - I think it's the Komodo 3000), so I usually aim them pointing slightly to the right and roughly horizontal. This enables oncoming traffic to have complete retina burnout and they usually start swerving uncontrollably and crash somewhere behind me. This prevents traffic from coming up behind me (due to the crashed car and emergency services etc) and thus makes me considerably safer.
I made a video of my light in flashing mode.
4QGQGB.mp4
Cars don’t have flashing headlights and, in striving where I can to inhabit the road much as a car would (taking the lane, signalling, obeying traffic lights etc., for the safety of all), I won’t use flashing lights either,” he added.
Cars do have flashing lights though, for attracting attention - indicators.
Their soid front lights are for seeing where they're going, so as to avoid things in their path and the rear lights are...well, they're there because drivers can't be trusted to use the front ones for the purpose intended (above). The flashing indicators are there to attract the attention of other road users who may not expect them to change direction.
(and, to throw my tuppence in, flashing lights alone aren't great for helping other road/path users work out where you are, but can assist in getting you noticed, so use them in conjunction with a solid light (without aiming either into the eyes on any oncomers)and you're being as nice as possible)
I hate flashing lights, front or rear - makes it harder to judge distance when the light is there, not there, there, not there, etc.
In any case, I figure that there is enough movement in the bike to make the light move, at least side to side, to get it noticed.
Up front, I usually use a NiteRider Minewt 600 or Smart light, both of which have hooded beams, so ideal for road.
Rear is usually a CatEye and/or Smart one.
Benefits of flashing lights:
1) Longer battery life.
Endex. Bloody stupid idea.
Flashing lights are banned in Holland. In Germany they are as well, I think, with a legal minimum and maximum lumen for bike lights, which is surely the way to do it.
In Holland specifically you will be fined if:
- Your front light is not yellow or white (no green light shaped like a bicycle), and your back light is not red.
- Your lights flash
- Your lights are on your arms or head/helmet (have to be on bike or torso)
- Don't have a red reflector on the rear of your bike, yellow ones on your pedals, and white ones on your rims/tyres
Surely it's not about brightness, it's about where it's pointing? Likewise with car headlights (which are vastly superior to bike lights), if they aren't aligned properly they dazzle people, if they are then nobody is bothered.
No. The amount of light entering the eye of oncoming drivers/cyclists/pedestrians is a function of three factors:
-light output (brightness)
-beam pattern
-alignment
If your beam pattern is rubbish and the light is bright enough, it doesn't matter where you point the bike, it will still dazzle people.
Also worth noting that I think the perceived dazzle is also affected by the size of the lens/reflector. I seem to recall that the same amount of light from a smaller point is more dazzling. (Think sun through magnifying glass - the pin prick of reflected light is more dazzling than the same amount of reflected sunlight falling over a wider area.) However, none of us really want huge lights as they'll be heavy and not very aero.
For daylight riding outside of summer (in other words grey weather here) i have a medium light front on pulse, not so bright to dazzle unless you are looking straight into it from 3 feet away, in which case you have other things to worry about, and a rear luggage rack mounted one that does a knight-rider style sideways sequence, meaning it's always lit, but the light shifts a bit to drawattantion. Once darkness draws in, bright front light, angled slightly down on steady and an extra rear light on a slow sequence to make sure I'm seen.
Front light is "claimed" at 4000 lumens, but I run 25% normally (seems closer to 600 really on that mode) but full power is handy when you're on a segregated route at night and there's suddenly a long stretch with no lighting working. (Remote switch to reduce power if I meet anyone of course)
Living in an area that does get REALLY dark in winter, I prefer to see "slightly too bright" than "cheapest micro lights I could get but now found I can't find new batteries" or "Ninjas"
I blame the light manufacturers for making it so darned hard to buy a reasonably-priced and reasonably well designed light that's bright enough to see where you're going without blinding oncoming road/path users.
Round/oval beam shapes are not appropriate unless you're off road. The Specialized Flux Elite is the most reasonably priced light (£80!) that I have been able to find with a decent beam pattern for riding on unlit roads/paths. The mount isn't perfect, and battery life at low temps isn't great but I'd buy it again despite this review: http://road.cc/content/review/171944-specialized-flux-elite-front-light (rating is largely based on £150 original price I think, which is a total joke.)
There just aren't enough well designed lights on the market. Exposure are starting to get it with the Strada series, but that doesn't come cheap and IMHO the beam pattern still isn't as good as those using a reflector.
Only other options currently available seem to be B&M Ixon IQ series, with limited availability and some build quality issues according to some reviews. The mount needs to be rock solid for a light with a proper beam shape, and I'm not sure this one is.
I am quite happy using a Moon Meteor (200 lux) pointing straight ahead in flashing mode in daylight, and a 1/2 watt flashing+dim solid Smart R1 rear light in all conditions as I just want to be seen. At night though the Flux Elite is enough, although a helmet light would be good too so that I can point it at people I don't think have seen me.
I think this is the one-and-only area where I wouldn't actually object to more state regulation of an aspect of cycling. Stronger, and much-better-thought-out and evidence-based, regulations on what kind of lights should be sold and used would make things simpler for everyone, I reckon. No more being caught between 'too bright' and 'not bright enough' and having to fret about it - if they obey the regulations then you can tell everyone complaining to get stuffed.
Ideally it would apply at an EU-level....oh, wait.
For me personally it's not so much whether the light is flashing on on solid beam, but the beam pattern and the angle. I see far to many people commuting with super bright lights (nothing wrong with that) that are angled really high. The problem with this is that it dazzles oncoming traffic, whether that be pedestrians, cyclists or drivers. Just like you shouldn't have your high beams on all the time when driving because it is dangerous, you shouldn't angle bike lights up high so that they dazzle people. Angle them down a little bit, then you will still be super visible to other road users and be able to see where you are going, but you won't blind other road users.
Frankly, think about what you like to be on the receiving end of. Do you like having cars with there full beams driving at you? If not, then just angle your lights down a tiny bit.
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