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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 w
by 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 agoI 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.
- mulmen 2y agoI have both. My bicycle has a headlight and taillight. My helmet has built in front and rear lights, which can flash.
- robertlagrant 2y agoFixed mixed with flashing or pulsing is fine. It's the strobing lights that do 5 super-short staccato flashes and then nothing for a moment that are the bad ones.
- kataklasm 2y agoSame thing for bicycles btw. Strobing rear lights are allowed as long as they are on your person (i.e. clothing/helmet or backpack), only on the bike itself they are not permitted.
- KennyBlanken 2y agoGermany also has the most cyclist deaths of any country in the EU (~450/year), twice as many as the next country. The UK has one quarter the deaths despite having ~3/4 of the population of Germany...
- Cumpiler69 2y agoSuch statistics without the full context are meaningless. How many people per capita cycle in the UK vs DE. It's expected that if a lot more people cycle, you're gonna have more cycling deaths than in countries where fewer people cycle. If nobody would cycle you'd have zero cycling deaths, hooray problem solved, you successfully gamed the metrics, if wining arbitrary metrics is the goal.
- dgfitz 2y agoI mean, the numbers are the numbers. Sounds like the point you wanted to make, accidentally, is that cycling has a linear growth rate of death if more of the population cycles. Was that your goal?
- Cumpiler69 2y ago>I mean, the numbers are the numbers. Random numbers alone mean nothing if they're meaningless and out of context. More people are killed every year by cows than by sharks. Does that make cows more dangerous than sharks or just that people are more likely to be around cows more often than around sharks? If Germany has a higher population than UK, and also a higher percentage of people of that population cycle, then yeah you're gonna have more dead cyclists. D'uh! Show me deaths per capita and cycling rates per capita, then we can talk about drawing a conclusion.
- supermatt 2y agoIn terms of urban distance travelled: DE 5.5%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Travel_distance_per_person_per_day_by_main_travel_mode_for_urban_mobility_on_all_days_(%25)_v3.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... UK 1.7%: https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics
- Marazan 2y agoI find blinking lights on cyclists both harder to spot and harder to judge the cyclists speed.
- mulmen 2y agoHow can you know how many cyclists you didn’t see?
- mattlondon 2y agoIt's ok, you feel the bump.
- Marazan 2y agoBecause I'm not blind. My impression though is I spot blinking lights cyclists at closer distances than solid light. Especially in rainy weather. And I absolutely have a more difficult time judging blinkers relative speed to me.
- mulmen 2y ago> Because I'm not blind. This is exactly the attitude that gets people killed. I hope you never experience the feeling of taking someone’s life. I have lost count of the number of times a driver has sheepishly smiled and waved after my screaming got their attention and narrowly avoided a collision. It’s a routine experience for cyclists.
- Marazan 2y agoYes, I could easily be totally missing cyclists but of the cyclists I _do_ see I spot the ones with solid lights earlier and further away than the ones with blinking lights. So my conclusion is I spot cyclists with solid lights more easily than ones with blinking lights unless you think there is a scenario where at close range blinking lights become easier to see and so I miss solid lights.
- macronitis 2y ago[dead]
- blackhaz 2y agoStroboscopes are creating hazardous situations. Everyone will start escalating their visibility until you can't see shit. Bikers need to wear reflective clothing, especially in London. I fucking hate those dudes all black on a black bicycle at night strobing their way through traffic.
- lupire 2y agoIn current year, bicycles should have medium brightness LED rope lights for visibility.
- quietbritishjim 2y agoI actually agree, they work great for drawing attention. The problem is, they're so distracting that they cause other problems. As a cyclist myself, I consider them a lot more selfish than bringing a steel cocoon with airbags with you. Recently I met one of these idiots on a dark cycle path and I veered away from them instinctively (partly because I could see they were present but couldn't judge where they were) and then overcompensated and swerved behind them - very nearly hitting their child on a kid's bike behind! I hadn't seen their child because I was blinded by the adult's light. They probably thought they were keeping their child safe but they were really putting them in danger.
- lupire 2y agoInstead of veering repeatedly and blindly in a dangerous situation, consider slowing to a stop like an AI car does.
- walthamstow 2y agoA blinking light is off as often as it is on.
- jeroenhd 2y agoBlinking lights stand out more but also makes it near impossible to accurately judge speed and direction, especially with multiple cyclists on the road. That's why it's illegal to use blinking bike lights* here in the Netherlands. *: technically, you're allowed to use blinking bike lights during the day, but what's the point
- haspok 2y agoBlinking / flashing bike lights were kind of OK when they were in the 10-20 lumen range. But nowadays even the cheap ones are on the order of several hundred lumens, which is a completely different game. It is possible to buy a 1000 lumen light for around 50 EUR (Magicshine), now consider that a single car headlight is around 1500 lumens... These lights have no cutoff beam. The problem is not even cars though, but other cyclists. Even with a cutoff beam it is easy to blind oncoming traffic if the light is not setup correctly. Flashing, it should be illegal.
- Reason077 2y agoAt least car headlights are aimed down, below the eye-level of other drivers, and this is actually checked and enforced in the UK. But many cyclists install high-powered LED beams and aim them upwards, at the eye level of other cyclists. It's even worse when they're flashing/strobing lights!
- rvnx 2y agoWhat you need is a high-visibility jacket, not make the problem worse using selfish solutions.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoThere’s a lot that could be done to make the infrastructure safer for both cyclists and drivers
- Angostura 2y agoThere is quite a lot of discussion about this on the London cycling subreddit. The consensus amongst the cyclists there generally is that flashing front lights are a bad idea. The can be confusing and disorienting and are pretty unpleasant for other oncoming cyclists and pedestrians, not just other car drivers.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. [citation needed]. They sure are annoying to look at, but I doubt about the improved visibility. Drivers are used to tracking positions and velocities of steady light sources - like those from cars, traffic lights, barriers, reflected lights, etc. Blinking lights are harder to track and are unusual; they seemingly should draw attention, but other than bicycles, they tend to show up on stuff like ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc. - that is, things safe to ignore.
- thecopy 2y agoThis is related to inattentional blindness, where car drives dont notice motorbikes since drivers are used to looking for two lights - not one: https://motolight.com/inattentional-blindness/ https://motolight.com/inattentional-blindness/ In the same manner, a single bicycle light might not register as a vehicle in the minds of car drivers. By blinking the light the short-circuit is broken - or so the theory goes.
- lhomdee 2y agoCan confirm this anecdotally. When I use my bike light in blinking mode, drivers are more careful around me every time. When I use the non-blinking mode, there have been times when drivers have clearly ignored my presence and I’ve had to wave my hand in front of the light to simulate blinking to get their attention.
- lupire 2y ago"ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc" are not safe to crash into
- TeMPOraL 2y agoThey are not. They are also not on the road.
- microtherion 2y agoI'd rather have blinking lights than what seems to be a disturbingly common fashion here in Zürich — no lights at all, drivers with dark clothing, AND running red lights.
- Mordisquitos 2y agoCan't really blame them for running red lights... if I were cycling at night with no lights and wearing dark clothes I would also be in a hurry to get home to safety!
- mattlondon 2y agoDoes it make them more visible? Surely they are just turning the light off half the time so half as visible?
- teraflop 2y agoOn my bike lights, the "strobe" mode doesn't actually turn the lights on and off. It turns them on steadily at moderate brightness, with periodic very brief flashes of higher intensity. That seems to me like a really good compromise.
- prmoustache 2y agoactually for drawing attention it is better to have lights mounted at the ankle as the pedaling movement attract attention, makes the cyclist recognizable, all the while without blinking annoyingly. There are also pedals that include front and rear lights. https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals