Letters to the Editor
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other two wheeled lighting
personally, I think some of the camping headsets like the zenix hq would be a lighting alternative for those who are caught during twilight occasionally. I use mine for reading in bed at night as well as running a snowblower during a nighttime snowfall. It works great for running in the woods close sunset and a host of other activities where you need hands-free lighting.
as for lighting at night, I highly recommend listening to the motorcycle and maxi-scooter communities. They have a lot of practical experience with passive and active indicators that you are there. For example, one of the reasons (possibly anecdotal) that motorcycles get hit at night from behind is that a single taillight is not enough information for a driver to be able to properly determine distance. Two or more lights spread across the entire width of the vehicle is a relatively successful method of dealing with people stopping way too close behind you.
I've experienced something similar on my recumbent. when I was in England in the mid-1980s, I picked up a little orange plastic stick with a clamp for attaching it to your pannier rack on one side and a 3 inch disk with a reflector in the center on the other. I found whenever I use this flag which increased my apparent width by another foot or so, drivers stop crowding me.
If my assumption is correct in that car drivers need a certain minimum apparent width before they can target and react properly, then any rear lights must be spaced apart by approximately 12 to 15 inches. I would suggest, for bicycles, and that the lighting span should be offset so that the right-hand side is directly behind the rider and the left is off into the road.
As for the steady versus flashing, from what I can tell, a rough consensus is when you first hit the brakes, flashing for a small number of times to alert those behind you, and go on solid for five or 10 seconds then repeat the cycle. And don't give me any BS about bicycles not having brake lights. That's a design flaw, not a feature.
But I highly recommend whatever high-tech lighting system you get, buy it now. I just spent the past day or two musing over how much energy per person it takes to make it possible to buy energy efficient gadgets like this one. At what point does civilization fall off the cliff and is not be able to make the high-tech devices necessary to survive the oil/gas transition to something better and not just fall back on decimating the population until we can grow enough wood for heat and light while tilling enough soil to make it through the winter without too many nutrition-based diseases.