15 ms·

It's bad with cars but even worse with bikes that have flashing or even strobing lights. Busy cycle lanes in London can be horrible on dark winter evenings with

It's bad with cars but even worse with bikes that have flashing or even strobing lights. Busy cycle lanes in London can be horrible on dark winter evenings with all the LED lights that can be incredibly bright and are very often not installed/adjusted/aimed correctly. I appreciate that cyclists want to make sure they're seen by car drivers, but beaming ultra-bright flashing lights straight into the eyes of oncoming cyclists on a cycle lane surely creates a hazard that outweighs any benefits?!

jeffbee 2y ago
Yes, American bike lights are totally out of control. They almost all have circular flashlight beams, totally inappropriate for use on the road. If you try to show someone a proper cutoff optic light they will say it's dim because it doesn't blind them with useless near field light. The only ones I've been able to find are imports from Europe like B+M or Supernova, and a few expensive domestic ones like Outbound Lighting. If you walk into almost any bike shop in America they will have only circular optics that blind everyone.
lifestyleguru 2y ago
This irritates me as well. Every vehicle on the road is supposed to have solid white front light and solid red back light, no reason why bicycles should be different. Strobing bright white light directed at the eye sight level is just aggressive and extremely selfish. The manuals usually state that in blinking or strobing mode the lights work longer on one battery charge.
- hgomersall 2y ago
  Flashing rear is much more noticeable and marks you out as a cyclist. Certainly in the UK, it's perfectly legal.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  You're getting exactly what you asked for. The reason they're so bright and annoying is that you, dear motoring public, love complaining we're "not visible enough" in the comments of newspaper articles about people killed while riding a bicycle. Or in letters to the editor. Or to your legislators. Or at hearings about road infrastructure. Or hearings about road safety legislation. Or after you've plowed into one of us. If you all would like to work on the whole "not killing large numbers of vulnerable road users", we can certainly look into the whole "make our bike lights not blink." My state requires, at night: * a rear light visible more than 500 feet * a rear reflector * pedal reflectors or ankle reflectors (both ankles) * front reflector (+500 ft) * front light (+500 ft) * wheel reflectors Our state used to only require a rear light, but a state legislator refused to let a road safety bill pass unless he got put his paws all over it and increase equipment requirements for cyclists to "balance" out requiring drivers must give cyclists a minimum of three feet passing distance. And yes, sometimes it is necessary to use a blinking mode to assure that we won't run out of battery (and thus have NO light) before we get home. On a long ride, for example, or in wintertime when lithium ion battery capacity plummets.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    Where this kind of road rage attitude comes from, "we against you", "you get what you are asking for"? I commute within city both with car and on a bicycle. When there is need to use bicycle lights I simply switch them on in constant light mode. During darker season of the year I have another constant light attachable to clothes or saddlebags as a backup. What is the even the problem here?
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Yes, agreed. Not the only us-vs-them-cyclist in this comment thread either, which is a shame. I also cycle and drive, and this is clearly something we cyclists need to fix for us drivers. The tribalism is vomit-inducing.
- mulmen 2y ago
  > no reason why bicycles should be different. Except for all the dead cyclists of course.
  - lifestyleguru 2y ago
    Blinking and strobing lights prevent bicycle deaths?!
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Yes.
tpm 2y ago
That's a failure to regulate, to set the rules and enforce them. Mostly everyone should just adopt the German StVZO rules for bike lights. https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-lights https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...
- Loic 2y ago
  German StVZO rules are not helping when the users are not directing the beam towards the road but horizontally. The current bicycles lights are very strong and I am sometimes nearly blinded from them in day light!
  - tpm 2y ago
    and enforce them
    - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
      In real life any street cop in .de is happy with you having any light at all, when riding a bicycle in the dark. At least that was my experience there. The exception may be when they are doing a special action check for a day, or so, across the whole city. Then you may be fined, cited, or even get some negative points in 'Flensburg'/your drivers license. But that applies more to running red lights, or using bicycle lanes in the wrong direction.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    I have yet to see a single bike light that actually lets you direct the light just to the road (like you can with dipped car headlights). Maybe there are some super expensive ones, but I don't think we can entirely blame cyclists. The design of affordable lights is just not very good.
    - looofooo0 2y ago
      The main problem is the lack of rigor fixing, i.e. lamps rotate up or down. https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit this is a solution
Aardwolf 2y ago
Bike LED lights tend to strobe when pushing the bike manually, which is very annoying. This is due to technical reasons with the dynamo and LED rather that programmed behavior afaik. But do LED bike lights that attempt to fix this issue (either be off or dim rather that flicker at low speed) exist? It's not a feature typically listed on their product descriptions...
- lucianbr 2y ago
  There are plenty battery-based lights that simply have multiple operating modes, some of them being strobe. This is by far the majority of the issue. I haven't seen someone using a dynamo for more than a decade. People choose the strobe, presumably because they feel more visible and therefore safer. I understand it, but it's annoying as hell.
  - Aardwolf 2y ago
    I'm talking about a hub dynamo in a bike in Europe. This is not uncommon at all. Maybe these are not common in other locales but I don't understand why that seems to have offended some :/ I'm talking about rapidly flashing lights in narrow streets in cities from people pushing their bikes (and me having such bike too, and trying to remember to switch of the light when pushing bike manually to not annoy others)
    - KennyBlanken 2y ago
      They're quite common even in the US as well. That person probably has no idea hub generators exist, or that they have standlight functionality. All the bike-share bikes in the US have generator hub lights as well (except for the ebikes, of course.)
  - dpkirchner 2y ago
    I had a driver yell at me that they only look for bicycles that have strobing lights, not bikes like mine that used a steady light. I don't know how common that specific mentality is, though.
thecopy 2y ago
Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. When sharing the dark road with cars, this compensates slightly against not being inside a steel cocoon with airbags. If cities actually invested in safe infrastructure the need for such lights would go away.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. Blinking lights are not legal according to road code in Germany and I assume many other EU countries nor do they necessary improve your safety. Yes, strobing lights do draw more attention at a glance (which is why they are reserved for emergency vehicles and signaling an emergency) making you think you'd be safer, but actually not since it makes it very difficult for the human eye to determine the distance to/from that object in motion on the road if it's always blinking, making the use of only strobing lights on the road unsafe and therefore banned for non emergency purposes. That's why your front and tail lights must be in a constant state. It's for your own safety too, hence why emergency vehicles don't strobe their running lights/brake lights but have additional strobes for that.
  - kataklasm 2y ago
    I agree with the underlying logic here. However, when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled (mind you, not parked in the street doing repairs, I'd totally understand that! Oftentimes they are just driving normally with the strobes on) I fail to see the logic applied consistently. In my opinion a good compromise for cyclists would be to allow strobing rear lights that only have power cycle of at least 90% and power periods of at least 2500ms, meaning they are on for 2500ms and then off for ~280ms, creating a strobing effect that is not as overpowering as normal strobing rear lights, which I'd agree are overbearing in commute traffic.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled Street maintenance trucks and all such vehicles, at least in Europe, don't strobe their running lights which are constant-ON as on all road vehicles and the strobes are additional warning lights. So they get the best of both worlds. But for cycling, blinking lights are stupid because you're strobing your only running light you need to see and be seen.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
blackhaz 2y ago
I hope there's a special place in hell for people with stroboscopes on roads.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
When I grew up we had a heap of rules for bicycle lighting drilled into us (ok not that badly but I remember them for the most part), one of them was the angle of your headlight should be at xyz to not blind other traffic. And that was in the time of bulb lights and dynamos so the lights would've been a lot more gentle anyway. Since then they've slacked the rules by a lot due to the sheer amount of decrepit and new/modern bikes on the road that didn't conform, so now instead of a red rear light and a white section on your rear fender, a shitty 1 euro LED light strapped to the back of your backpack or package carrier is apparently enough. And LED front lights are a thing, often aimed straight ahead for visibility / being able to see further than three meters ahead of you. I mean I'm guilty myself, got myself a new bike a few years back that has a headlight built into the frame etc.
gadders 2y ago
Just came here to see this. Per capita I get blinded more often by cyclists. I get having bright lights, but try and angle them slightly downwards at least.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
The grid ones are fun though: https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/21/lumigrids-while-cycling/?utm_source=thisiswhyimbroke.com&utm_medium=referral https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/21/lumigrids-while-cycli...
ErigmolCt 2y ago
I think safety isn’t just about being seen, it’s also about not impairing others’ vision
Mumps 2y ago
strobing bike lights are also a horrific health/pain hazard for people who get migraines or have light-triggerable epilepsy. I really wish they'd be banned from sale :(
sans_souse 2y ago
no it's not worse than cars. I drive at night and you'd be lucky to even see a bicyclist amid those blinding LED's.
ssl-3 2y ago
It's really hard to find non-blinding lights for bikes here in the States. The Germans seem to have a standard (with TUV certification) for it, as of course they do. But we don't get much of that kit here. (And because search engines are absolutely ruined: Searching for less, like "dim bike light" or "non-blinding" or whatever always winds up with finding more, instead. "Oh, you're searching for a nice pleasant light that just illuminates the path in front of you at a warm color temperature without blinding anyone? Let me show you the MEGAFUCKER 9000! Powered by 48VDC and over 9000K, this light is guaranteed appear brighter than the sun and to ABSOLUTELY FUCK anyone within a kilometer! /r/fuckcars approved! You always knew you were an asshole, and with the MEGAFUCKER 9000 everyone else will know it too!" Every single time. (It's the same with anything else. Want a small, diminutive spatula so a small egg pan can actually be used for cooking instead of wall art? The more specific the search terms are, the bigger the fucking spatulas in the search results become. Or even industrial or craft materials. Want rigid, open-cell, large-pore foam that doesn't sponge up water for a project? Good luck. Unless you already know exactly what product you need down to the SKU (which one can only glean via telepathy), the search results will consist entirely of opposite-world SUPER-SOFT EXTRA ABSORBENT foam.)
- thimkerbell 2y ago
  Could an LLM fix this, please.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Nope. Not yet, anyway. LLMs are absolutely terrible at finding specific, detailed facts that have any consistent element of truth to them, and the well from which they draw their knowledge was deliberately poisoned from the beginning.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  Hrrm. That german standard is(or was) a bit ridiculous, because it's based on pre-WW2 tech. Meaning powered by a 'dynamo'(generator driven by friction from the wheel, usually side-running, sometimes integrated in the front-hub, sometimes pressed against the back-wheel). You don't have that, except for so called 'city-', or 'commuterbikes'. With e-bikes, or 'ped-elecs' it's different, but I don't need that shit, so don't care. Anyways, if you wan't 'german' standards, search with german words, like 'Fahrradlicht' and 'Fahrradbeleuchtung' and maybe you'll find some fitting pieces, though they won't be cheap. That standard btw. is 'StVZO' (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassungs-Ordnung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassung...) as applied to any bicycle above 11Kg weight. Common brands offering stuff adhering to the StVZO or otherwise reasonable specs are: https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/ https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/ https://www.bumm.de/en/ https://www.bumm.de/en/ https://www.cateye.com/intl/ https://www.cateye.com/intl/ https://www.knog.com/ https://www.knog.com/ https://www.lupine.de/eng https://www.lupine.de/eng https://sigma.bike/ https://sigma.bike/ https://supernova-lights.com/en https://supernova-lights.com/en https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-computers-bike-radar-power-meter-headlights/?series=BRAND10561#shopallcycling https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-c... Or try: https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 and see what's there. Or there: https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/ https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/ Or here: https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html Amongst countless others, but I'm lazy, and dilligently deny delving deeper to deliver your data. :p
robertlagrant 2y ago
Yes, this is a huge problem as well. The lights are so bright, randomly mounted, and as you say, the user can just strobe them if they like. Imagine if car lights were as unregulated.
- zero_k 2y ago
  They are effectively unregulated. Most drivers have no clue how to adjust them, and the "modders" replace them randomly with whatever they find is the brightest/coolest. Yeah, you _could_ fine them and claim that the cars are unroadworthy until fixed, but if a rule is not enforced, is it a rule? So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too. I bicycle a lot and I tell other cyclist that they need to adjust their lights all the time. At least they seem to take feedback. Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too. No, one is actually unregulated, and the other is imperfectly regulated. > Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes. I can't imagine, with such a homogenising, negative attitude towards a group comprising millions of people, why they might not listen to you.
geraldwhen 2y ago
In the US the strobing lights are critical. A huge portion of drivers are looking straight down while they drive at their phone.
NegativeLatency 2y ago
In the absence of safe bike networks and traffic calming it seems like a reasonable attempt at self preservation. I’ve got a slightly dimmer light on my helmet that is great for getting people’s attention when they’re just not looking for bikes.

jeffbee 2y ago

Yes, American bike lights are totally out of control. They almost all have circular flashlight beams, totally inappropriate for use on the road. If you try to show someone a proper cutoff optic light they will say it's dim because it doesn't blind them with useless near field light. The only ones I've been able to find are imports from Europe like B+M or Supernova, and a few expensive domestic ones like Outbound Lighting. If you walk into almost any bike shop in America they will have only circular optics that blind everyone.

lifestyleguru 2y ago

This irritates me as well. Every vehicle on the road is supposed to have solid white front light and solid red back light, no reason why bicycles should be different. Strobing bright white light directed at the eye sight level is just aggressive and extremely selfish. The manuals usually state that in blinking or strobing mode the lights work longer on one battery charge.

hgomersall 2y ago
Flashing rear is much more noticeable and marks you out as a cyclist. Certainly in the UK, it's perfectly legal.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
You're getting exactly what you asked for. The reason they're so bright and annoying is that you, dear motoring public, love complaining we're "not visible enough" in the comments of newspaper articles about people killed while riding a bicycle. Or in letters to the editor. Or to your legislators. Or at hearings about road infrastructure. Or hearings about road safety legislation. Or after you've plowed into one of us. If you all would like to work on the whole "not killing large numbers of vulnerable road users", we can certainly look into the whole "make our bike lights not blink." My state requires, at night: * a rear light visible more than 500 feet * a rear reflector * pedal reflectors or ankle reflectors (both ankles) * front reflector (+500 ft) * front light (+500 ft) * wheel reflectors Our state used to only require a rear light, but a state legislator refused to let a road safety bill pass unless he got put his paws all over it and increase equipment requirements for cyclists to "balance" out requiring drivers must give cyclists a minimum of three feet passing distance. And yes, sometimes it is necessary to use a blinking mode to assure that we won't run out of battery (and thus have NO light) before we get home. On a long ride, for example, or in wintertime when lithium ion battery capacity plummets.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  Where this kind of road rage attitude comes from, "we against you", "you get what you are asking for"? I commute within city both with car and on a bicycle. When there is need to use bicycle lights I simply switch them on in constant light mode. During darker season of the year I have another constant light attachable to clothes or saddlebags as a backup. What is the even the problem here?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Yes, agreed. Not the only us-vs-them-cyclist in this comment thread either, which is a shame. I also cycle and drive, and this is clearly something we cyclists need to fix for us drivers. The tribalism is vomit-inducing.
mulmen 2y ago
> no reason why bicycles should be different. Except for all the dead cyclists of course.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago
  Blinking and strobing lights prevent bicycle deaths?!
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Yes.

tpm 2y ago

That's a failure to regulate, to set the rules and enforce them. Mostly everyone should just adopt the German StVZO rules for bike lights. https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-lights https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...

Loic 2y ago
German StVZO rules are not helping when the users are not directing the beam towards the road but horizontally. The current bicycles lights are very strong and I am sometimes nearly blinded from them in day light!
- tpm 2y ago
  and enforce them
  - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
    In real life any street cop in .de is happy with you having any light at all, when riding a bicycle in the dark. At least that was my experience there. The exception may be when they are doing a special action check for a day, or so, across the whole city. Then you may be fined, cited, or even get some negative points in 'Flensburg'/your drivers license. But that applies more to running red lights, or using bicycle lanes in the wrong direction.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  I have yet to see a single bike light that actually lets you direct the light just to the road (like you can with dipped car headlights). Maybe there are some super expensive ones, but I don't think we can entirely blame cyclists. The design of affordable lights is just not very good.
  - looofooo0 2y ago
    The main problem is the lack of rigor fixing, i.e. lamps rotate up or down. https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit this is a solution

Aardwolf 2y ago

Bike LED lights tend to strobe when pushing the bike manually, which is very annoying. This is due to technical reasons with the dynamo and LED rather that programmed behavior afaik. But do LED bike lights that attempt to fix this issue (either be off or dim rather that flicker at low speed) exist? It's not a feature typically listed on their product descriptions...

lucianbr 2y ago
There are plenty battery-based lights that simply have multiple operating modes, some of them being strobe. This is by far the majority of the issue. I haven't seen someone using a dynamo for more than a decade. People choose the strobe, presumably because they feel more visible and therefore safer. I understand it, but it's annoying as hell.
- Aardwolf 2y ago
  I'm talking about a hub dynamo in a bike in Europe. This is not uncommon at all. Maybe these are not common in other locales but I don't understand why that seems to have offended some :/ I'm talking about rapidly flashing lights in narrow streets in cities from people pushing their bikes (and me having such bike too, and trying to remember to switch of the light when pushing bike manually to not annoy others)
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    They're quite common even in the US as well. That person probably has no idea hub generators exist, or that they have standlight functionality. All the bike-share bikes in the US have generator hub lights as well (except for the ebikes, of course.)
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  I had a driver yell at me that they only look for bicycles that have strobing lights, not bikes like mine that used a steady light. I don't know how common that specific mentality is, though.

thecopy 2y ago

Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. When sharing the dark road with cars, this compensates slightly against not being inside a steel cocoon with airbags. If cities actually invested in safe infrastructure the need for such lights would go away.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. Blinking lights are not legal according to road code in Germany and I assume many other EU countries nor do they necessary improve your safety. Yes, strobing lights do draw more attention at a glance (which is why they are reserved for emergency vehicles and signaling an emergency) making you think you'd be safer, but actually not since it makes it very difficult for the human eye to determine the distance to/from that object in motion on the road if it's always blinking, making the use of only strobing lights on the road unsafe and therefore banned for non emergency purposes. That's why your front and tail lights must be in a constant state. It's for your own safety too, hence why emergency vehicles don't strobe their running lights/brake lights but have additional strobes for that.
- kataklasm 2y ago
  I agree with the underlying logic here. However, when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled (mind you, not parked in the street doing repairs, I'd totally understand that! Oftentimes they are just driving normally with the strobes on) I fail to see the logic applied consistently. In my opinion a good compromise for cyclists would be to allow strobing rear lights that only have power cycle of at least 90% and power periods of at least 2500ms, meaning they are on for 2500ms and then off for ~280ms, creating a strobing effect that is not as overpowering as normal strobing rear lights, which I'd agree are overbearing in commute traffic.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled Street maintenance trucks and all such vehicles, at least in Europe, don't strobe their running lights which are constant-ON as on all road vehicles and the strobes are additional warning lights. So they get the best of both worlds. But for cycling, blinking lights are stupid because you're strobing your only running light you need to see and be seen.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

blackhaz 2y ago

I hope there's a special place in hell for people with stroboscopes on roads.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

When I grew up we had a heap of rules for bicycle lighting drilled into us (ok not that badly but I remember them for the most part), one of them was the angle of your headlight should be at xyz to not blind other traffic. And that was in the time of bulb lights and dynamos so the lights would've been a lot more gentle anyway. Since then they've slacked the rules by a lot due to the sheer amount of decrepit and new/modern bikes on the road that didn't conform, so now instead of a red rear light and a white section on your rear fender, a shitty 1 euro LED light strapped to the back of your backpack or package carrier is apparently enough. And LED front lights are a thing, often aimed straight ahead for visibility / being able to see further than three meters ahead of you. I mean I'm guilty myself, got myself a new bike a few years back that has a headlight built into the frame etc.

gadders 2y ago

Just came here to see this. Per capita I get blinded more often by cyclists. I get having bright lights, but try and angle them slightly downwards at least.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

The grid ones are fun though: https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/21/lumigrids-while-cycling/?utm_source=thisiswhyimbroke.com&utm_medium=referral https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/21/lumigrids-while-cycli...

ErigmolCt 2y ago

I think safety isn’t just about being seen, it’s also about not impairing others’ vision

Mumps 2y ago

strobing bike lights are also a horrific health/pain hazard for people who get migraines or have light-triggerable epilepsy. I really wish they'd be banned from sale :(

sans_souse 2y ago

no it's not worse than cars. I drive at night and you'd be lucky to even see a bicyclist amid those blinding LED's.

ssl-3 2y ago

It's really hard to find non-blinding lights for bikes here in the States. The Germans seem to have a standard (with TUV certification) for it, as of course they do. But we don't get much of that kit here. (And because search engines are absolutely ruined: Searching for less, like "dim bike light" or "non-blinding" or whatever always winds up with finding more, instead. "Oh, you're searching for a nice pleasant light that just illuminates the path in front of you at a warm color temperature without blinding anyone? Let me show you the MEGAFUCKER 9000! Powered by 48VDC and over 9000K, this light is guaranteed appear brighter than the sun and to ABSOLUTELY FUCK anyone within a kilometer! /r/fuckcars approved! You always knew you were an asshole, and with the MEGAFUCKER 9000 everyone else will know it too!" Every single time. (It's the same with anything else. Want a small, diminutive spatula so a small egg pan can actually be used for cooking instead of wall art? The more specific the search terms are, the bigger the fucking spatulas in the search results become. Or even industrial or craft materials. Want rigid, open-cell, large-pore foam that doesn't sponge up water for a project? Good luck. Unless you already know exactly what product you need down to the SKU (which one can only glean via telepathy), the search results will consist entirely of opposite-world SUPER-SOFT EXTRA ABSORBENT foam.)

thimkerbell 2y ago
Could an LLM fix this, please.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Nope. Not yet, anyway. LLMs are absolutely terrible at finding specific, detailed facts that have any consistent element of truth to them, and the well from which they draw their knowledge was deliberately poisoned from the beginning.
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Hrrm. That german standard is(or was) a bit ridiculous, because it's based on pre-WW2 tech. Meaning powered by a 'dynamo'(generator driven by friction from the wheel, usually side-running, sometimes integrated in the front-hub, sometimes pressed against the back-wheel). You don't have that, except for so called 'city-', or 'commuterbikes'. With e-bikes, or 'ped-elecs' it's different, but I don't need that shit, so don't care. Anyways, if you wan't 'german' standards, search with german words, like 'Fahrradlicht' and 'Fahrradbeleuchtung' and maybe you'll find some fitting pieces, though they won't be cheap. That standard btw. is 'StVZO' (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassungs-Ordnung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassung...) as applied to any bicycle above 11Kg weight. Common brands offering stuff adhering to the StVZO or otherwise reasonable specs are: https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/ https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/ https://www.bumm.de/en/ https://www.bumm.de/en/ https://www.cateye.com/intl/ https://www.cateye.com/intl/ https://www.knog.com/ https://www.knog.com/ https://www.lupine.de/eng https://www.lupine.de/eng https://sigma.bike/ https://sigma.bike/ https://supernova-lights.com/en https://supernova-lights.com/en https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-computers-bike-radar-power-meter-headlights/?series=BRAND10561#shopallcycling https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-c... Or try: https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 and see what's there. Or there: https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/ https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/ Or here: https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html Amongst countless others, but I'm lazy, and dilligently deny delving deeper to deliver your data. :p

robertlagrant 2y ago

Yes, this is a huge problem as well. The lights are so bright, randomly mounted, and as you say, the user can just strobe them if they like. Imagine if car lights were as unregulated.

zero_k 2y ago
They are effectively unregulated. Most drivers have no clue how to adjust them, and the "modders" replace them randomly with whatever they find is the brightest/coolest. Yeah, you _could_ fine them and claim that the cars are unroadworthy until fixed, but if a rule is not enforced, is it a rule? So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too. I bicycle a lot and I tell other cyclist that they need to adjust their lights all the time. At least they seem to take feedback. Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too. No, one is actually unregulated, and the other is imperfectly regulated. > Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes. I can't imagine, with such a homogenising, negative attitude towards a group comprising millions of people, why they might not listen to you.

geraldwhen 2y ago

In the US the strobing lights are critical. A huge portion of drivers are looking straight down while they drive at their phone.

NegativeLatency 2y ago

In the absence of safe bike networks and traffic calming it seems like a reasonable attempt at self preservation. I’ve got a slightly dimmer light on my helmet that is great for getting people’s attention when they’re just not looking for bikes.