Letters to the Editor
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You vould have bought LED flashlights at Home Depot a year ago.
I know because I have a few of them. 2xAA and bright as get all. The bigger units have been around a little longer.
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A fundamentally unsound practise I am afraid
How good are these lights, will they warn you away from road hazards, glass, nails, etc, or are they simply a beacon for the neighbors Rotweiller? Not to be morose about it, but drunk drivers are often attracted to lights of any kind, on otherwise dark roads. Having been a truck driver for years, my advice to everyone is try not to drive at night, night bicycling doesn't seem to have any advantages over driving. Do these things also function as flashlights in an emergency? I love anything that makes bicycling safer, but riding after dark, or before sunrise, is one way to be on the evening news.
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Eyes on the Road
Hmmm. . . interesting little gadget. What I really find interesting is the name IXON. If the X is pronounced like a Z then the pronunciation would be Eye-ZON? (Didn't see a pronunciation blurb while visiting the product website.)
Yeah sure, Eyes-On bike light. Clever these marketing folks.
Cheers.
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Oh, cripes. Buy a flashlight and some duct tape.
If you want to be fancy, get an LED flashlight and duct tape. Costs you $15 tops, even if you buy it at a high-priced store like Wal-Mart. Inasmuch as most people who buy bicycles for exercise will be putting them away, or selling them on Craig's List within a month, that's all you need to invest in as pointless an accessory as a light.
The pretense and stupidity of people who spend a fortune on high-tech items, when they could make them from stuff they probably already own, is a constant wonder.
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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.
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Personally, I use a pair of lights
Two Planet Bike 1W LED lights do just fine for me. The units each take 4AA batteries each (recharging is possible). In total, they cost about $60. This is compared to the single Ixon IQ light that is about $90 without batteries.
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Forget the Battery Altogether
If you're at all serious about reducing the usage of batteries and the attendant environmental impact, then the obvious choice is not another battery operated light, no matter how efficient, but using your bike to generate the necessary electricity it needs without a battery.
A dynamo hub solution is the best built-in, on demand, no battery lighting system around. Much lighter than the NiteRider. Schmidt Dynamo hubs are some of the best, but Shimano and others are also in the game. And there are a host of lights available for them from a variety of vendors including Busch & Müller, who do a healthy lighting business in Europe just from dynamo generated lights.
The latest dynamo hubs are also becoming very efficient. Nobody short of a Cat 4 rider is going to notice the minuscule drag created by the dynamo hub.
Increasing the efficiency of a battery operated light is useful, but not as useful as doing away with the need to use a battery in the first place.
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I have an acquaintance who is an engineer in the LED business.....
and he waxes wildly enthusiastic at parties about LEDs replacing everything that lights up, while saving tons of watts in the process. I'm semi-skeptical, but if he's anywhere near right this will be a very helpful change in terms of energy consumption.
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Entry Level LED headlamp
For most people an entry-level LED light is probably probably more than sufficient. I have got a decent one that I got from a bike shop a couple of years ago for $30. It four standard double A batteries (I use rechargeables) and it gives more light and better battery life than the series of incandescents I went through. Its plenty of light for my usual just before dawn or just after dusk riding, though if I am going to be out when it is darker I sometimes supplement it with another LED headlamp on my head.
Like most things in cycling, there is huge range on what you can spend. I can't see spending $100 on a light, since if I did I would probably take a spill and bust it. Besides, $100 is more than I have spent to buy most of my bikes!