Is it possible to have too bright of lights … front or rear? I say yes. And yet manufacturers keep increasing the power of lights. That would probably be okay if they included lenses which direct the light so it does not shine upward any higher than it needs to be.
But very few manufacturers do this. Most of the lights have the light beam going out 360 degrees shining upward illuminating everything out in front including the eyes of those who don’t appreciate it. I have only had one headlight thus far with such optics.. I don’t use it as it has more lumens than I care to use in the daytime.
My 300 lumen headlights are certainly guilty of this. They are only rated at 300 lumen but man are they bright! I only use one at a time and I use it on flash mode. The picture below is with both on and on steady mode. That is STUPID Bright!
Now I have a question to ask you … how bright are you? Riding at night in darkness we need lots of light as long as we are by ourselves.
We need lots of light so we can see the path ahead of us. It is downright dangerous to ride faster than our headlight is illuminating the path ahead of us. In the daytime when most of us ride we still need lots of light but for an altogether different reason … to be seen by others. With headlights that shine the light beam equally 360 degrees it does not do much good to aim the light downwards unless we aim it way way down. And if we do that we then risk others not seeing us at all. So what is a person to do?
I am sure most of us have noticed and complained about newer motor vehicles whose headlights are blinding even on low beam. We often question whether or not they have their headlights on low beam as they are just too bright and seem to be aimed up at our eyes. I doubt very much if anyone is going to do anything about it. We are just stuck with dealing with it. Too bad, so sad! It also seems to be the case with bicycle lights. We want to be seen which means that others are just going to have to deal with it.
I was taught as a young child that if a driver in an oncoming car (truck, etc.) does have his high beam headlights on and won’t/doesn’t dim them all I can do it look over at the right side of the road … hopefully at a white line painted along the side of the pavement. That is the best I can do in that situation. I would say the same is true for those dealing with our trike headlights. Don’t look at them. And if someone complains about our lights being too bright I suggest apologizing but explaining that I would rather offend someone than get hit by someone who says they didn’t see me.
Every once in awhile I encounter a bicyclist with an extremely bright headlight … so bright that it truly blinds me if I look toward it rather than look away at the side of the road or trail. As far as I am concerned there is no excuse for a cyclist to have such a bright light in use in the daytime. But they are out there and we just have to deal with it. I mean, after all, we can’t hardly shoot their light out. It is stupid and irresponsible to be STUPID Bright. We all need to follow the commandment of Jesus … “do unto others as we would have them do unto us”.
I know this bicycle lighting subject is somewhat controversial and not everyone agrees with me. I just had someone say to me that my headlight is too bright and blinded the car driver who almost hit me yesterday when they turned in front of me forcing me to brake hard to avoid getting hit. I don’t agree with that person who said this. If this happened quite frequently I would have to consider it as a possibility. My headlight is bright, but it is not STUPID Bright. BTW, there is a bicycle light named Stupid Bright. They make various lights besides this one I linked to.
KEEP ON TRIKIN’
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