BIKE: Re: night time visibility

[Librik or Babich]

dana_price wrote:

> Christine,
>
> With daylight wasting time about to
> end, it's back to return communting in the dark for many of us. Time to
> dust off & charge up those lights and get some new ones!  A work from Mike
> Librik on available gear for visibility would be welcome here.

Funny that someone should say that. Ms. Willis's post (with its rather
pedestrian name of "RE: BIKE: Re: Forum-bicycleaustin.info Digest, Vol 13, Issue
20" ... not very informative) was the first post about bicycles in some days.

> > Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:28:55 -0500
> > From: "CHRISTINE WILLIS" <chriwill>
> >
> > Those little blinkie tail lights really are not very noticeable unless
> > they  are the really big ones ... maybe 5 to 6 inches in diameter.
> Drivers just do not see the small taillights amongst the headlights of
> oncoming cars, taillights of cars in front of them, neon signs, red
> lights, green lights ....

Back when I got my LCI certification, I recall ex-HPV racer, ex-bike shop owner,
ex-recumbent builder, ex-pedicab operator (and now ex-Austinite) Bart Hiatt
mention LED lights do not work well in city traffic, and he observed how
reflective are better in such circumstances. I put particular attention into
reflectives after that. I think LEDs are good for some circumstances, and should
be installed in sufficient numbers, since the bike moves quickly from situation
to situation and should be equipped for all circumstances. Remotely activated
high-powered strobes are another class of equipment entirely.

I know that jewel reflectors are the standard for bicycles, but I tend to think
of Avery engineer-grade 5-year self-adhesive reflective plastic sheeting,
available by the generous square foot (12" x 14") from Easy Street or from Regal
Plastics on Metric. This stuff can be applied to plastic tarp or to Lexan sheets
to make a lightweight and durable reflective sheet. While jewel reflectors are
probably more reflective per unit area, the reflective sheeting (or I say
"reflectives" instead of "reflectors") can cover a wide field, occupying more of
the motor's retina. It can present a large field of solid color (which I find
more aesthetically pleasing) or a mixed, patterned field of different colors
(like v's or stripes -- and apparently some research into motorcycle safety has
found this more attention getting [opinions, anyone?]).

Reflectives work better down low, where car headlight beams are aimed. While I
put some on my helmet, I expect that the stuff down low will do the real work,
both against pursuing traffic and cross traffic at intersections. But this
brings up an inherent weakness in bicycles, which is their skeletal, minimal
construction. There is little place to put fields of reflectives, or even
reflectors or LEDs for that matter. For this reason, I have found a useful
synergy between cargo fittings and reflectives. Permanent cargo will slow you
down, due to both its weight and its wide profile's aerodynamic penalty. But
this profile can be marvelously parleyed into visibility by covering it with
fields of reflectives. As the cargo sits low, so do the reflectors. I have been
told that under high bean car lights, my numerous taillights are invisible in
the blazing yellow glare of cargo boxes.

I tend to get lots of space on the road, and I am sure that I am not the only
skilled cyclist who can make this claim. While it is most what you do in traffic
that determines what treatment you get, I think that the passive dimensions of
my bike, along with the intensity of the reflective treatments it all gets,
works to my benefit even in those cases where I am partly oblivious to
surrounding traffic.

> > If you're going to ride at night, please wear reflective neon clothing and
> > install the biggest taillights you can find.

Here again, it is reflective fields that catch the eye.

The biggest taillights I know of are the 29-LED lights made by brakelite.com,
but they are not very reliable.

I am yet to find a wholly satisfactory headlight system. I am sure that there
are plenty of good ones for $500, but I tend to focus my interest on more
affordable and easily repairable systems. I would love to find a 4-6V headlight
that could run off of internal batteries but could be connected to an external
rechargeable battery without modification to the light. The Sigma Sport Cube and
Ellipsoid models have a charger port on them, but this will not run the light.
The Cateye HL-500II had an accessory that allowed this, but both the plug in the
accessory and the contact between the acc. and the light were unreliable. Some
models of headlight have an electronic switch that will blow out if battery
polarity is reversed, creating a reliably concern.

What I want in a headlight system is several individual lamps running off a
single, large rechargeable battery. That way, light output is easily adjusted
and if something in a light fails, one has multiple backups. If the battery
fails, disposable batteries can be obtained and used inside the lights.

--
Mike Librik, LCI #929
Easy Street Recumbents
512-453-0438
45th and Red River St., thereabouts
Central Austin
info
www.easystreetrecumbents.com
www.urbancycling.com

"Is it about a bicycle?"