Bad Blinking

[Nehmo]

On a pleasant dark city evening, while you are sitting (or moving) in traffic, you can look out upon the sea of red ahead containing spinning rubber and various reflective and illuminating devices of the modern era. They all say, “Look! …” It’s beautiful. It’s relaxing and exciting at once. But then your eyes are attracted to a deliberate annoyance, a blinking rear bike light. I get a minor headache just thinking about them. If the purpose is to draw attention to the bike, the blinking light has succeeded.

But a secondary purpose of a bike, as a whole, is to look good, or beautiful (as above). The blinks are contrary to that. Maybe the bike rider can trade-off some safety for beauty.

That’s what I do. I don’t see my own taillight, but the crowd behind does. When I ride my bike, I put on a show. I put on a non-blink-blink one for the world behind, but indirectly for myself too. I suspect some car/bike accidents are caused by the car driver getting irritated beyond his-her limit. (This happens subconsciously we hope.) The car driver thinks, “There’s one of those lane-hijackers taking up what rightfully belongs to us cars. And he has the Gaul to blink at me. Hummm… I’ll show him who owns the lanes.”

 

[Chalo]

Rear blinkies, for better or worse, are the visual signature of a bicycle. It's safer to be identified correctly on the road than to be misidentified. That's the main reason I use a flashing mode on every taillight I have that can do it.

The second reason I use flashing mode is because I can have a brighter flash for the same battery life compared to a steady beam.

 

[Guerney]

I suspect some car/bike accidents are caused by the car driver getting irritated beyond his-her limit. (This happens subconsciously we hope.) The car driver thinks, “There’s one of those lane-hijackers taking up what rightfully belongs to us cars. And he has the Gaul to blink at me. Hummm… I’ll show him who owns the lanes.”

Despite 1% of the population being psychopaths, and the majority of that 1% driving heavy steel boxes on wheels, I have had no such problems for three years, despite making a "1800LM" headlight red using heat resistant red acetate sheet. Looks much brighter than this if you are situated directly behind. As you can see, it's angled down so it doesn't dazzle. Bright enough to be visible around bends on dark country roads, illuminates foliage, makes drivers slow down because they wonder what the gubbins is ahead. Two "1800LM" plus another "2400LM" on the handlebar, and a 70LUX on the fork makes those damned ever proliferating potholes more visible. During the day, the I keep two constantand one flashing on the handlebar, and the red at the black flashing. The Oxford lollipop bolted to my right hand side handlebar end has completely stopped close passing, and close cut-in overtaking ahead of oncoming traffic, concrete bollards, traffic islands etc. Instead of zooming an inch past my handlebar, they zoom an inch past my Oxford lollipop, which is 39.99cm away from the end of my handlebar. All of the headlights are soldered to my ebike battery via an inline blade fuse and switches. I keep one small headlight on the handlebar pointed backwards at my hi-viz blouson, because hi-viz aint unless it's reflecting light. All of the preceding has effectively burned through my cyclist invisibility cloak. Driver dudes don't suddenly pull out in front of my bike anymore at intersections, or fail to notice me at roundabouts. Pedestrians don't wander out onto the road in front. So far these lights have proven bright enough to distract drivers and pedestrians from texting, opining on antisocial media, playing Donkey Kong, swiping Tinder, or whatever it is they do with those newfangled fondleslab JesusPhone things.

 

[amberwolf]

i don't have constant blinky lights either, but i think i have sufficient correct lighting for people to tell i'm there and what's going on. if a blinky would improve that, i'd use one, but it doesn't--if it was the only light i had, i'd use one, but i found that lighting up like the other vehciles around me works better to communicate with them and get me my place on the road more safely. (especially since no one, including ohter cyclists, know what hand signals mean).

the larger hand-sized tail, turn, and brake lights on the rear are dot truck lights (i see the same ones on all sorts of work trucks during my daily commutes, though they tend to look tiny on those given the size difference between the sb cruiser trike and them). the strips are automotive marker / accent lighting, with the ones on the canopy edge also being turn signals as well as markers.

note the ones on the handlebar bash guards are now up on the front canopy edge instead, because backwash from their light was causing problems with me seeing other things down on the bars; they work much better without that up on the canopy.

 

[rafalg]

There's no problem with blinking bike lights when there's just few bikes. But if there's a mass of bikes, like in some european cities, such light show gets problematic both to drivers and other cyclists too. So, there are cities where blinkers are verbotten.

 

[Guerney]

Trouble is, drivers by default cover cyclists with invisibility cloaks, and we have a lot more to lose when squished like bugs, minced and flattened into street pizza with bits of bone sticking out. Of course there's much less chance of any of that happening, if we had airbags, more non-biological crumple zones than one front wheel, and were safe and warmly ensconced by steel and toughened glass. Given our much higher risk of injury in collisions with those damned heavy metal boxes on wheels, we should be allowed lights at least three times brighter and larger than theirs. Keeping my bright lights on day and night burns away that invisibility. During the day, I keep one on constant mode, and one or two of my 1800LM headlights flashing. They flash at slightly different rates.

(1080P is selectable)

I've typed a little more about this here:

https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/hoping-to-increase-driver-passing-distance-at-night-ive-glued-front-and-rear-reflectors-to-my-wing-mirrors.44501/post-732164