Today’s QoW comes from Premium Member Mike Feinstein as a follow-up to last week’s Question about rear flashers.
(We really need to replenish our stock of Questions! Please submit you own QoW ideas using the Question of the Week Ideas link.)
Expert road cycling advice, since 2001
Today’s QoW comes from Premium Member Mike Feinstein as a follow-up to last week’s Question about rear flashers.
(We really need to replenish our stock of Questions! Please submit you own QoW ideas using the Question of the Week Ideas link.)
Flashing and strobe lighting may be irritating but they attract attention. We bikers are just about invisible during many day light situations especially when the Sun is low in the sky and/or when drivers are attending to other distractions. We are talking about staying alive, aren’t we? I have been using a front light with a flashing mode instead of the common strobe mode. It is less irritating (NR350 compact).
In keeping with my observations last week, I haven’t seen arguments for and against flashing or strobing front lights. The one comment I saw last week that struck a real chord was “a flashing rear light alerts traffic to vehicles that are traveling below the prevailing speed (sic)”. I am familiar with this type of behavior from experiences in rural areas where farm equipment will often us a public roadway, take an unusual amount of space or travel at a pace different from prevailing traffic, and have flashers alerting traffic to an unusual situation. It seems that a bicycle might be considered in the same way. I think everyone agrees that flashing lights increase visibility, but do they really create a hazard as well? Do they, in attracting attention, draw attention away from other situations creating a hazard? This is the only downside I have been able to imagine.