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Its a shame, for a UK product, they didn't consider that it will be illegal to use in the UK[1] as your main bike light. It has a steady mode, and such needs t

by RobAley 14y ago

Its a shame, for a UK product, they didn't consider that it will be illegal to use in the UK[1] as your main bike light. It has a steady mode, and such needs to conform to BS 6102/3, which it won't, so it means it can't be used as the main light. As an additional light it doesn't need to be BS 6102/3 stamped, but does need to be white (not green) and the flashing mode needs to be between 60 and 240 flashes per minute (which it may do, but doesn't say). When I'm driving, a green picture of a bike going down a road might distract me from the actual bike, especially when its projected 4-6m ahead of it as they plan. In inner-city cycling as a cyclist, you rarely need the light to see where you're going, more to allow other traffic to see you. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_lighting#Legal_requirements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_lighting#Legal_requirem...

TeMPOraL 14y ago
> and the flashing mode needs to be between 60 and 240 flashes per minute (which it may do, but doesn't say). There's a thing I never understood about bike lights - why people use flashing lights? They are distracting like hell, and could probably cause some serious discomfort for people with photosensitive epilepsy. EDIT: http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-lights-trigger-seizures-so-dont-use-them/ http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-li...
- thisone 14y ago
  at night, the flashing gives me even longer warning that I'm coming up on a cyclist, since it's easier to notice a flashing red or white light. A solid light, can be dismissed for a second or two as a reflection. also, it tells me it's a cyclist and not a small moped. As a cyclist I like to have a blinking rear light, and two front lights, a blinking one and a steady one. (as a driver, cyclists with a blinker and a steady are the easiest for me to pick out)
- alexkus 14y ago
  > There's a thing I never understood about bike lights - why people use flashing lights? They are distracting like hell, and could probably cause some serious discomfort for people with photosensitive epilepsy. They're more visible than a steady light, but it's very hard to gauge closing distance of just a flashing light. For these reasons I use a combination of flashing and steady lights (both front and rear). As for triggering PSE. They won't. 240 flashes per minute = 4Hz. Perfectly safe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobe_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobe_light " Strobe lights and epilepsy ... There have been no known seizures at or below the 8Hz (or 8 flashes per second) level. Most fire alarms in schools, hospitals, stadiums, etc strobe at a 2Hz rate, which is obviously completely safe. "
- incision 14y ago
  >They are distracting like hell Think about that.
- RobAley 14y ago
  My personal feeling is that they are distracting in so far as they cause people to notice the bike, which is intended affect. They are distracting in the same way that emergency services flashing lights are distracting. Personally, at night I use 2 lights, a steady light and a flashing light, and in the day I have a flashing light on (the change in brightness is more noticeable in the daytime than a steady light). I've seen the epilepsy caused by bike lights thing mentioned a few times, but never by anyone who has directly experienced it (the author of the article you link, and indeed the person she links to, don't appear to have). In the absence of any hard numbers, my intuition is that the number of people suffering from a bike-light-induced-epilepsy incident would be much lower than the number of people suffering a hit-by-car-when-not-using-flashing-light incident, due to the lower number of suffers than cyclists and the requirement to come across a cyclist with light flashing at an appropriate rate, in their direction, with sufficient brightness. I'm happy to be proved wrong of course, and I do have an open mind on that. Edit: Having read the 8 flashes a second figure mentioned below, and looked it up on other sources online, I no longer have an open mind on the issue! Edit2: Ok, thats not strictly true, I always have an open mind about everything, but I'll need some hard numbers to pull me the other way...!
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  They use them because they're "distracting", they want to distract you from what you are doing, which is driving over the top of them. There seem to be some people in the comments of your link disputing this, but the blog author seems to acknowledge it. There also seems to be some confusion around the difference between strobing and flashing lights (depends on the frequency maybe?).
- jdietrich 14y ago
  Flashing lights are much more visible, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that you can drive the LED much harder and run the light for longer if it's flashing. Peripheral vision is much more sensitive to flashing lights than solid lights, because we're evolved to be more sensitive to fast-moving objects. Movement is another key reason for flashing lights - motorists have a great deal of difficulty in accurately judging the speed of cyclists, who are travelling more slowly than them and at a much broader range of speeds. Flashing lights make it much easier to judge speed and distance, which is why the FIA require flashing rear lights to be used on the rear of Formula 1 racing cars in wet weather conditions. As another commenter stated, bicycle lights flash at the wrong frequency to trigger photosensitive epilepsy.

by RobAley 14y ago

TeMPOraL 14y ago

> and the flashing mode needs to be between 60 and 240 flashes per minute (which it may do, but doesn't say). There's a thing I never understood about bike lights - why people use flashing lights? They are distracting like hell, and could probably cause some serious discomfort for people with photosensitive epilepsy. EDIT: http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-lights-trigger-seizures-so-dont-use-them/ http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-li...

thisone 14y ago
at night, the flashing gives me even longer warning that I'm coming up on a cyclist, since it's easier to notice a flashing red or white light. A solid light, can be dismissed for a second or two as a reflection. also, it tells me it's a cyclist and not a small moped. As a cyclist I like to have a blinking rear light, and two front lights, a blinking one and a steady one. (as a driver, cyclists with a blinker and a steady are the easiest for me to pick out)
alexkus 14y ago
> There's a thing I never understood about bike lights - why people use flashing lights? They are distracting like hell, and could probably cause some serious discomfort for people with photosensitive epilepsy. They're more visible than a steady light, but it's very hard to gauge closing distance of just a flashing light. For these reasons I use a combination of flashing and steady lights (both front and rear). As for triggering PSE. They won't. 240 flashes per minute = 4Hz. Perfectly safe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobe_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobe_light " Strobe lights and epilepsy ... There have been no known seizures at or below the 8Hz (or 8 flashes per second) level. Most fire alarms in schools, hospitals, stadiums, etc strobe at a 2Hz rate, which is obviously completely safe. "
incision 14y ago
>They are distracting like hell Think about that.
RobAley 14y ago
My personal feeling is that they are distracting in so far as they cause people to notice the bike, which is intended affect. They are distracting in the same way that emergency services flashing lights are distracting. Personally, at night I use 2 lights, a steady light and a flashing light, and in the day I have a flashing light on (the change in brightness is more noticeable in the daytime than a steady light). I've seen the epilepsy caused by bike lights thing mentioned a few times, but never by anyone who has directly experienced it (the author of the article you link, and indeed the person she links to, don't appear to have). In the absence of any hard numbers, my intuition is that the number of people suffering from a bike-light-induced-epilepsy incident would be much lower than the number of people suffering a hit-by-car-when-not-using-flashing-light incident, due to the lower number of suffers than cyclists and the requirement to come across a cyclist with light flashing at an appropriate rate, in their direction, with sufficient brightness. I'm happy to be proved wrong of course, and I do have an open mind on that. Edit: Having read the 8 flashes a second figure mentioned below, and looked it up on other sources online, I no longer have an open mind on the issue! Edit2: Ok, thats not strictly true, I always have an open mind about everything, but I'll need some hard numbers to pull me the other way...!
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
They use them because they're "distracting", they want to distract you from what you are doing, which is driving over the top of them. There seem to be some people in the comments of your link disputing this, but the blog author seems to acknowledge it. There also seems to be some confusion around the difference between strobing and flashing lights (depends on the frequency maybe?).
jdietrich 14y ago
Flashing lights are much more visible, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that you can drive the LED much harder and run the light for longer if it's flashing. Peripheral vision is much more sensitive to flashing lights than solid lights, because we're evolved to be more sensitive to fast-moving objects. Movement is another key reason for flashing lights - motorists have a great deal of difficulty in accurately judging the speed of cyclists, who are travelling more slowly than them and at a much broader range of speeds. Flashing lights make it much easier to judge speed and distance, which is why the FIA require flashing rear lights to be used on the rear of Formula 1 racing cars in wet weather conditions. As another commenter stated, bicycle lights flash at the wrong frequency to trigger photosensitive epilepsy.