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Comment by tradertef | Hacker News Reader

There are too many cars with this problem. Especially high trucks and SUVs whose beams blinds drivers in front of them..

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It's bad with cars but even worse with bikes that have flashing or even strobing lights. Busy cycle lanes in London can be horrible on dark winter evenings with all the LED lights that can be incredibly bright and are very often not installed/adjusted/aimed correctly.

I appreciate that cyclists want to make sure they're seen by car drivers, but beaming ultra-bright flashing lights straight into the eyes of oncoming cyclists on a cycle lane surely creates a hazard that outweighs any benefits?!

Yes, American bike lights are totally out of control. They almost all have circular flashlight beams, totally inappropriate for use on the road. If you try to show someone a proper cutoff optic light they will say it's dim because it doesn't blind them with useless near field light.

The only ones I've been able to find are imports from Europe like B+M or Supernova, and a few expensive domestic ones like Outbound Lighting. If you walk into almost any bike shop in America they will have only circular optics that blind everyone.

Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible. When sharing the dark road with cars, this compensates slightly against not being inside a steel cocoon with airbags.

If cities actually invested in safe infrastructure the need for such lights would go away.

Blinking lights stand out more but also makes it near impossible to accurately judge speed and direction, especially with multiple cyclists on the road. That's why it's illegal to use blinking bike lights* here in the Netherlands.

*: technically, you're allowed to use blinking bike lights during the day, but what's the point

> "it's illegal to use blinking bike lights* here in the Netherlands."

I wish they had this rule in the UK.

Blinking lights grab attention.

That makes them useful during the day

I actually agree, they work great for drawing attention. The problem is, they're so distracting that they cause other problems. As a cyclist myself, I consider them a lot more selfish than bringing a steel cocoon with airbags with you.

Recently I met one of these idiots on a dark cycle path and I veered away from them instinctively (partly because I could see they were present but couldn't judge where they were) and then overcompensated and swerved behind them - very nearly hitting their child on a kid's bike behind! I hadn't seen their child because I was blinded by the adult's light. They probably thought they were keeping their child safe but they were really putting them in danger.

Instead of veering repeatedly and blindly in a dangerous situation, consider slowing to a stop like an AI car does.

> Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible.

[citation needed]. They sure are annoying to look at, but I doubt about the improved visibility. Drivers are used to tracking positions and velocities of steady light sources - like those from cars, traffic lights, barriers, reflected lights, etc. Blinking lights are harder to track and are unusual; they seemingly should draw attention, but other than bicycles, they tend to show up on stuff like ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc. - that is, things safe to ignore.

This is related to inattentional blindness, where car drives dont notice motorbikes since drivers are used to looking for two lights - not one: https://motolight.com/inattentional-blindness/

In the same manner, a single bicycle light might not register as a vehicle in the minds of car drivers. By blinking the light the short-circuit is broken - or so the theory goes.

Can confirm this anecdotally. When I use my bike light in blinking mode, drivers are more careful around me every time. When I use the non-blinking mode, there have been times when drivers have clearly ignored my presence and I’ve had to wave my hand in front of the light to simulate blinking to get their attention.

"ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc" are not safe to crash into

They are not. They are also not on the road.

Blinking / flashing bike lights were kind of OK when they were in the 10-20 lumen range. But nowadays even the cheap ones are on the order of several hundred lumens, which is a completely different game. It is possible to buy a 1000 lumen light for around 50 EUR (Magicshine), now consider that a single car headlight is around 1500 lumens... These lights have no cutoff beam.

The problem is not even cars though, but other cyclists. Even with a cutoff beam it is easy to blind oncoming traffic if the light is not setup correctly. Flashing, it should be illegal.

At least car headlights are aimed down, below the eye-level of other drivers, and this is actually checked and enforced in the UK. But many cyclists install high-powered LED beams and aim them upwards, at the eye level of other cyclists. It's even worse when they're flashing/strobing lights!

Stroboscopes are creating hazardous situations. Everyone will start escalating their visibility until you can't see shit. Bikers need to wear reflective clothing, especially in London. I fucking hate those dudes all black on a black bicycle at night strobing their way through traffic.

In current year, bicycles should have medium brightness LED rope lights for visibility.

There is quite a lot of discussion about this on the London cycling subreddit.

The consensus amongst the cyclists there generally is that flashing front lights are a bad idea. The can be confusing and disorienting and are pretty unpleasant for other oncoming cyclists and pedestrians, not just other car drivers.

I find blinking lights on cyclists both harder to spot and harder to judge the cyclists speed.

How can you know how many cyclists you didn’t see?

Because I'm not blind.

My impression though is I spot blinking lights cyclists at closer distances than solid light. Especially in rainy weather.

And I absolutely have a more difficult time judging blinkers relative speed to me.

> Because I'm not blind.

This is exactly the attitude that gets people killed. I hope you never experience the feeling of taking someone’s life.

I have lost count of the number of times a driver has sheepishly smiled and waved after my screaming got their attention and narrowly avoided a collision. It’s a routine experience for cyclists.

Yes, I could easily be totally missing cyclists but of the cyclists I _do_ see I spot the ones with solid lights earlier and further away than the ones with blinking lights.

So my conclusion is I spot cyclists with solid lights more easily than ones with blinking lights unless you think there is a scenario where at close range blinking lights become easier to see and so I miss solid lights.

It's ok, you feel the bump.

actually for drawing attention it is better to have lights mounted at the ankle as the pedaling movement attract attention, makes the cyclist recognizable, all the while without blinking annoyingly.

There are also pedals that include front and rear lights. https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals

I'd rather have blinking lights than what seems to be a disturbingly common fashion here in Zürich — no lights at all, drivers with dark clothing, AND running red lights.

Can't really blame them for running red lights... if I were cycling at night with no lights and wearing dark clothes I would also be in a hurry to get home to safety!

A blinking light is off as often as it is on.

Does it make them more visible?

Surely they are just turning the light off half the time so half as visible?

On my bike lights, the "strobe" mode doesn't actually turn the lights on and off. It turns them on steadily at moderate brightness, with periodic very brief flashes of higher intensity. That seems to me like a really good compromise.

What you need is a high-visibility jacket, not make the problem worse using selfish solutions.

>Blinking lights makes the bicycle driver more visible.

Blinking lights are not legal according to road code in Germany and I assume many other EU countries nor do they necessary improve your safety.

Yes, strobing lights do draw more attention at a glance (which is why they are reserved for emergency vehicles and signaling an emergency) making you think you'd be safer, but actually not since it makes it very difficult for the human eye to determine the distance to/from that object in motion on the road if it's always blinking, making the use of only strobing lights on the road unsafe and therefore banned for non emergency purposes.

That's why your front and tail lights must be in a constant state. It's for your own safety too, hence why emergency vehicles don't strobe their running lights/brake lights but have additional strobes for that.

I agree with the underlying logic here. However, when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled (mind you, not parked in the street doing repairs, I'd totally understand that! Oftentimes they are just driving normally with the strobes on) I fail to see the logic applied consistently. In my opinion a good compromise for cyclists would be to allow strobing rear lights that only have power cycle of at least 90% and power periods of at least 2500ms, meaning they are on for 2500ms and then off for ~280ms, creating a strobing effect that is not as overpowering as normal strobing rear lights, which I'd agree are overbearing in commute traffic.

>when street maintenance trucks are driving around normally with their extremely bright orange strobes enabled

Street maintenance trucks and all such vehicles, at least in Europe, don't strobe their running lights which are constant-ON as on all road vehicles and the strobes are additional warning lights. So they get the best of both worlds.

But for cycling, blinking lights are stupid because you're strobing your only running light you need to see and be seen.

Same thing for bicycles btw. Strobing rear lights are allowed as long as they are on your person (i.e. clothing/helmet or backpack), only on the bike itself they are not permitted.

I have both. My bicycle has a headlight and taillight. My helmet has built in front and rear lights, which can flash.

Fixed mixed with flashing or pulsing is fine. It's the strobing lights that do 5 super-short staccato flashes and then nothing for a moment that are the bad ones.

Germany also has the most cyclist deaths of any country in the EU (~450/year), twice as many as the next country.

The UK has one quarter the deaths despite having ~3/4 of the population of Germany...

Blinking lights are also banned in the Netherlands, which does a lot better in the statistics. Even then, the statistics are kind of useless; here bike deaths are mostly caused by old people on (electric) bikes falling over or getting into minor accidents, nothing to do with lights. The statistics are skewed in ways that cannot be compensated for easily, as on average UK cyclists are younger than Dutch cyclists and therefore less likely to die or get severely hurt in a traffic incident.

Great Britain has half the bike usage of Germany. Germany has 36 million bikers (43% of 84 million), Great Brittain about 12 million (19% of 68 million), so the stats line up more than you'd think at a first glance. The difference between Germany and Great Brittain becomes laugably obvious when you look at the statistics for how many people use bikes as a primary transport method (6% GB vs 21% DE).

That said, biking outside of large cities in Germany is kind of terrible, so I'm not at all surprised about how deadly cycling in Germany, though that may just be my spoilt Dutch take on things.

Edit: my source for these statistics: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Such statistics without the full context are meaningless. How many people per capita cycle in the UK vs DE.

It's expected that if a lot more people cycle, you're gonna have more cycling deaths than in countries where fewer people cycle.

If nobody would cycle you'd have zero cycling deaths, hooray problem solved, you successfully gamed the metrics, if wining arbitrary metrics is the goal.

In terms of urban distance travelled:

DE 5.5%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

UK 1.7%: https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics

I mean, the numbers are the numbers. Sounds like the point you wanted to make, accidentally, is that cycling has a linear growth rate of death if more of the population cycles.

Was that your goal?

>I mean, the numbers are the numbers.

Random numbers alone mean nothing if they're meaningless and out of context. More people are killed every year by cows than by sharks. Does that make cows more dangerous than sharks or just that people are more likely to be around cows more often than around sharks?

If Germany has a higher population than UK, and also a higher percentage of people of that population cycle, then yeah you're gonna have more dead cyclists. D'uh!

Show me deaths per capita and cycling rates per capita, then we can talk about drawing a conclusion.

Correlation is not causation.

That's a failure to regulate, to set the rules and enforce them. Mostly everyone should just adopt the German StVZO rules for bike lights.

https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...

German StVZO rules are not helping when the users are not directing the beam towards the road but horizontally. The current bicycles lights are very strong and I am sometimes nearly blinded from them in day light!

I have yet to see a single bike light that actually lets you direct the light just to the road (like you can with dipped car headlights).

Maybe there are some super expensive ones, but I don't think we can entirely blame cyclists. The design of affordable lights is just not very good.

> I have yet to see a single bike light that actually lets you direct the light just to the road

My 1975 vintage Peugeot bike already has a front light with a lens that directs the beam downwards, can be adjusted to point even further downwards with a screw, and even has a small shield on top of the lens to stop the beam from travelling upwards.

It works perfectly with the original dynamo and a cheap LED light bulb from Amazon.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikeforums.net-vbulletin/640x48...

>I have yet to see a single bike light that actually lets you direct the light just to the road

What the hell, are your lights welded/glued in place to the bike frame or what?

Most bike lights are screwed in, and with those screws you can adjust the angle of the light both up/down and left/right like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71AKoH1V25L._AC_SL1500_....

> What the hell, are your lights welded/glued in place to the bike frame or what?

You have misunderstood. Obviously I can angle the light, but it still has a circular beam pattern like a torch. Dipped car headlights are not like that. They have a sharp cut-off at the horizon so you can light the road brightly without blinding oncoming traffic. Very few bike lights have a beam pattern like that.

>but it still has a circular beam pattern like a torch

Definitely not on any modern light. They usually have a rectangular beam pattern.

The comment mentions "affordable lights" so I think they're talking about lights like [1] that are mounted on the handlebar and where you can only adjust the vertical angle.

Speaking for my German bubble, there are roughly two types of bike riders: those who invest 1k+ on their gear and those that buy a flea market bike for 100€ and then fit the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention). Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.

[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71nSkKcBIdL._AC_UF894,10...

>I think they're talking about lights like [1] that are mounted on the handlebar and where you can only adjust the vertical angle

It can't be that what he meant, since if you can adjust the vertical angle, you can stop blinding people.

>Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.

I know. I nearly ran over one who had no good lights, dark hoodie with no reflective gear, when I was reversing on a dark street, at night. Nearly shat myself after the close call.

I know students are poor, but God damn man, your life is worth more than a couple of Euros you're saving by running a crappy light who's battery died 2 years ago. Skip on a pizza/few beers in town one time and get a proper light.

You don't need to spend thousands of euros on gear to have a safe and visible cycling experience.

People are just stupid and lazy about their own safety, that's all. You only realize it when you switch from a cyclist to a driver, how dangerous these cyclists with no good lights are at night.

> the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention

Dude, that light you shared is a luxury compared to what most students I see have. Most have these god awful things with low battery: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Bicycle-Accessories-S...

For example this one (Color: QD-1301T): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001313812415.html

It's not exactly cheap (and probably can be found cheaper elsewhere), but then it's superbright 2400 lumen with 2 sets of leds (headlights and meeting/dipped lights) and a powerbank. You can switch with the buttons. I own a slightly different version (2200 lumen, same casing) and it's great.

edit: cheaper here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006446894517.html

The main problem is the lack of rigor fixing, i.e. lamps rotate up or down.

https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit this is a solution

My cheap lights, which are rubber-strapped onto my handlebars, can be directed anywhere I want...

And do they have a shaped beam pattern like a dipped car headlight? I doubt it.

They're far too basic for that - but with the advantage that I have full control over where they're pointed. Sometimes basic is better!

and enforce them

In real life any street cop in .de is happy with you having any light at all, when riding a bicycle in the dark. At least that was my experience there. The exception may be when they are doing a special action check for a day, or so, across the whole city. Then you may be fined, cited, or even get some negative points in 'Flensburg'/your drivers license.

But that applies more to running red lights, or using bicycle lanes in the wrong direction.

This must be a joke:

    Front and rear bike lights must be connected to a 6V/3W generator, ie a dynamo

In any case it's not true, batteries can be used too (I believe the dynamo regulation was true some time ago, but not currently).

it was changed in 2014 - but still a lot of 2015 vintage ebikes have a dynamo for their lights (like mine)

I don't know about Germany, but here in Belgium front hub dynamos are very common. They're never discharged and always work, so I don't see a reason not to use that.

In Germany, hub dynamos are far from the norm, they're much more expensive than the usual wheel-side dynamos and as (as usual) the German market is much more price sensitive it's rare to see hub dynamos.

The problem with wheel-side dynamos is that they barely work when it's raining (which is often correlated with the moments you actually need light) and they add so much drag (and noise).

Hub dynamos are indeed more expensive (around 50€ as a starting price) but since bikes are the primary means of transportation for many people, I think they usually see this as an acceptable price for the convenience it brings (I know I do).

Also, quite a few bikes here are leased (for around 20€/month, including all maintenance) and those always have a hub dynamo I think.

There are many good LED light bulbs for vintage bikes on Amazon which can be directly used with a dynamo. I have been a happy user for years now. Replacing / recharging bike light batteries is a life overhead I don't need.

Would that be the country that has the highest number of cyclist deaths in the EU, twice as many as the next highest country, four times as many as in the UK which has 3/4 the population?

Here's a hint: Germany is extremely car-centric and makes regulations that cater to drivers, not road safety.

You failed to establish a causal connection between regulating bike lights and whatever you are on about. Yes Germany is mostly car-centric (I'm not German and don't live there) and the UK is car-centric too, but I'm mostly a biker and get blinded by bike lights all the time. StVZO lights help with that.

Germans cycle more than 4 times as much per capita than Brits. Absolute numbers are meaningless, you have to look at deaths per km. Germanies bike infrastructure is not great and there is lots to criticize, but that's true for most places in Europe.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kilometres-cycled-per-in...

Here's a paper that attempts to do it right: Castro, A., S. Kahlmeier and T. Gotschi (2018), “Exposure-adjusted Road Fatality Rates for Cycling and Walking in European Countries”, Discussion Paper, International Transport Forum, Paris.

https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/exposure-a...

Germany does rather well. Though the paper is 6 years old (and based on numbers even older) and the number of bike accidents in Germany have gone up since then.

This data is from 15 to 20 years ago. I think the usage of bike has probably increased in the UK in the meantime. That may not change your point, but this 4 times figure is probably inacurate now.

In the US the strobing lights are critical. A huge portion of drivers are looking straight down while they drive at their phone.

The grid ones are fun though: https://www.yankodesign.com/2013/05/21/lumigrids-while-cycli...

Yes, this is a huge problem as well. The lights are so bright, randomly mounted, and as you say, the user can just strobe them if they like. Imagine if car lights were as unregulated.

They are effectively unregulated. Most drivers have no clue how to adjust them, and the "modders" replace them randomly with whatever they find is the brightest/coolest. Yeah, you _could_ fine them and claim that the cars are unroadworthy until fixed, but if a rule is not enforced, is it a rule? So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too.

I bicycle a lot and I tell other cyclist that they need to adjust their lights all the time. At least they seem to take feedback. Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.

> So, yeah, effectively unregulated, too.

No, one is actually unregulated, and the other is imperfectly regulated.

> Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.

I can't imagine, with such a homogenising, negative attitude towards a group comprising millions of people, why they might not listen to you.

strobing bike lights are also a horrific health/pain hazard for people who get migraines or have light-triggerable epilepsy. I really wish they'd be banned from sale :(

This irritates me as well. Every vehicle on the road is supposed to have solid white front light and solid red back light, no reason why bicycles should be different. Strobing bright white light directed at the eye sight level is just aggressive and extremely selfish. The manuals usually state that in blinking or strobing mode the lights work longer on one battery charge.

Flashing rear is much more noticeable and marks you out as a cyclist. Certainly in the UK, it's perfectly legal.

> no reason why bicycles should be different.

Except for all the dead cyclists of course.

Blinking and strobing lights prevent bicycle deaths?!

Yes.

You're getting exactly what you asked for.

The reason they're so bright and annoying is that you, dear motoring public, love complaining we're "not visible enough" in the comments of newspaper articles about people killed while riding a bicycle. Or in letters to the editor. Or to your legislators. Or at hearings about road infrastructure. Or hearings about road safety legislation. Or after you've plowed into one of us.

If you all would like to work on the whole "not killing large numbers of vulnerable road users", we can certainly look into the whole "make our bike lights not blink."

My state requires, at night:

* a rear light visible more than 500 feet * a rear reflector * pedal reflectors or ankle reflectors (both ankles) * front reflector (+500 ft) * front light (+500 ft) * wheel reflectors

Our state used to only require a rear light, but a state legislator refused to let a road safety bill pass unless he got put his paws all over it and increase equipment requirements for cyclists to "balance" out requiring drivers must give cyclists a minimum of three feet passing distance.

And yes, sometimes it is necessary to use a blinking mode to assure that we won't run out of battery (and thus have NO light) before we get home. On a long ride, for example, or in wintertime when lithium ion battery capacity plummets.

Where this kind of road rage attitude comes from, "we against you", "you get what you are asking for"? I commute within city both with car and on a bicycle. When there is need to use bicycle lights I simply switch them on in constant light mode. During darker season of the year I have another constant light attachable to clothes or saddlebags as a backup. What is the even the problem here?

Yes, agreed. Not the only us-vs-them-cyclist in this comment thread either, which is a shame. I also cycle and drive, and this is clearly something we cyclists need to fix for us drivers. The tribalism is vomit-inducing.

In the absence of safe bike networks and traffic calming it seems like a reasonable attempt at self preservation.

I’ve got a slightly dimmer light on my helmet that is great for getting people’s attention when they’re just not looking for bikes.

no it's not worse than cars. I drive at night and you'd be lucky to even see a bicyclist amid those blinding LED's.

It's really hard to find non-blinding lights for bikes here in the States.

The Germans seem to have a standard (with TUV certification) for it, as of course they do. But we don't get much of that kit here.

(And because search engines are absolutely ruined: Searching for less, like "dim bike light" or "non-blinding" or whatever always winds up with finding more, instead.

"Oh, you're searching for a nice pleasant light that just illuminates the path in front of you at a warm color temperature without blinding anyone? Let me show you the MEGAFUCKER 9000! Powered by 48VDC and over 9000K, this light is guaranteed appear brighter than the sun and to ABSOLUTELY FUCK anyone within a kilometer! /r/fuckcars approved! You always knew you were an asshole, and with the MEGAFUCKER 9000 everyone else will know it too!"

Every single time.

(It's the same with anything else. Want a small, diminutive spatula so a small egg pan can actually be used for cooking instead of wall art? The more specific the search terms are, the bigger the fucking spatulas in the search results become.

Or even industrial or craft materials. Want rigid, open-cell, large-pore foam that doesn't sponge up water for a project? Good luck. Unless you already know exactly what product you need down to the SKU (which one can only glean via telepathy), the search results will consist entirely of opposite-world SUPER-SOFT EXTRA ABSORBENT foam.)

Hrrm. That german standard is(or was) a bit ridiculous, because it's based on pre-WW2 tech. Meaning powered by a 'dynamo'(generator driven by friction from the wheel, usually side-running, sometimes integrated in the front-hub, sometimes pressed against the back-wheel). You don't have that, except for so called 'city-', or 'commuterbikes'. With e-bikes, or 'ped-elecs' it's different, but I don't need that shit, so don't care.

Anyways, if you wan't 'german' standards, search with german words, like 'Fahrradlicht' and 'Fahrradbeleuchtung' and maybe you'll find some fitting pieces, though they won't be cheap.

That standard btw. is 'StVZO' (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassung...) as applied to any bicycle above 11Kg weight.

Common brands offering stuff adhering to the StVZO or otherwise reasonable specs are:

https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/

https://www.bumm.de/en/

https://www.cateye.com/intl/

https://www.knog.com/

https://www.lupine.de/eng

https://sigma.bike/

https://supernova-lights.com/en

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-c...

Or try:

https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 and see what's there.

Or there:

https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/

Or here:

https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html

Amongst countless others, but I'm lazy, and dilligently deny delving deeper to deliver your data. :p

Could an LLM fix this, please.

Nope. Not yet, anyway.

LLMs are absolutely terrible at finding specific, detailed facts that have any consistent element of truth to them, and the well from which they draw their knowledge was deliberately poisoned from the beginning.

I hope there's a special place in hell for people with stroboscopes on roads.

Just came here to see this. Per capita I get blinded more often by cyclists.

I get having bright lights, but try and angle them slightly downwards at least.

When I grew up we had a heap of rules for bicycle lighting drilled into us (ok not that badly but I remember them for the most part), one of them was the angle of your headlight should be at xyz to not blind other traffic. And that was in the time of bulb lights and dynamos so the lights would've been a lot more gentle anyway. Since then they've slacked the rules by a lot due to the sheer amount of decrepit and new/modern bikes on the road that didn't conform, so now instead of a red rear light and a white section on your rear fender, a shitty 1 euro LED light strapped to the back of your backpack or package carrier is apparently enough. And LED front lights are a thing, often aimed straight ahead for visibility / being able to see further than three meters ahead of you.

I mean I'm guilty myself, got myself a new bike a few years back that has a headlight built into the frame etc.

Bike LED lights tend to strobe when pushing the bike manually, which is very annoying. This is due to technical reasons with the dynamo and LED rather that programmed behavior afaik. But do LED bike lights that attempt to fix this issue (either be off or dim rather that flicker at low speed) exist? It's not a feature typically listed on their product descriptions...

There are plenty battery-based lights that simply have multiple operating modes, some of them being strobe. This is by far the majority of the issue. I haven't seen someone using a dynamo for more than a decade.

People choose the strobe, presumably because they feel more visible and therefore safer. I understand it, but it's annoying as hell.

I'm talking about a hub dynamo in a bike in Europe. This is not uncommon at all.

Maybe these are not common in other locales but I don't understand why that seems to have offended some :/ I'm talking about rapidly flashing lights in narrow streets in cities from people pushing their bikes (and me having such bike too, and trying to remember to switch of the light when pushing bike manually to not annoy others)

They're quite common even in the US as well. That person probably has no idea hub generators exist, or that they have standlight functionality.

All the bike-share bikes in the US have generator hub lights as well (except for the ebikes, of course.)

I had a driver yell at me that they only look for bicycles that have strobing lights, not bikes like mine that used a steady light. I don't know how common that specific mentality is, though.

I keep a hand mirror for just this case. Most passengers are more than eager to reflect it back and it almost always solves the problem.

Another option, if the headlights are at eye level, is to move the rear-view mirror so that you see the passenger seat headrest. That makes it the perfect angle to make their headlights reflect right back at them.

Is it because of the dual mirror system? Do you have to actually lower the mirror? Asking for a friend who is blinded daily by these idiots.

It's because that will square up the mirror. From a top down view, the mirror will be perpendicular to the light rays

Feedback at its finest.

Solas tape is another potential option.

If there was one invention that made its way into every car - I wish it would be some kind of oncoming active light dimming / compensation system. Maybe in the glass, or glasses / goggles a driver wears.

What I do now on the highways is point my side mirrors all the way out and flip the rearview mirror. I already have deeply tinted windows.

Of course this doesn't help with oncoming traffic.

Some cars have matrix LED headlights, where the car can turn off the LEDs pointing at oncoming cars, as well as turn the lights when driving around corners.

Here [1] is the VW ID.3. It's subtle, but notice how the area around the other cars is much darker. In real life it's kind of amazing to watch, as you see the LEDs follow the other cars on the road and "erase" them from the light.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFH0URtbX1s

Surely the inhabitants inside the houses being flashed on, drivers in front of this car, and drivers from the opposite direction just finishing the curve are ecstatic about this "brilliant technology". Nothing excites people more than being flashed on with blinding white light especially in bad weather during the night.

Maybe you misunderstood. What you say is already true for the type of regular high beams that all cars have. What matrix LEDs do is "blot out" areas they should not shine. That is an improvement over high beams, not worse.

I believe the ID.3 does blot out drivers in the opposite direction even in a curve.

Apparently these were illegal in the US until 2022, so I don't know how many cars here even have them yet.

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1135084_us-finally-allow...

My Volvo automatically dims both side mirrors and the rear view mirror when bright lights are detected, it actually works really well.

> ... I wish it would be some kind of oncoming active light dimming / compensation system.

I think fancy Mercedes models have very advanced stuff like that. IIRC it's even crazier: in addition to compensate in the mirrors/rear-view mirror, they can also detect where another car or pedestrian is and adapt, constantly, precisely how their own beams are projected as to not blind anyone.

EDIT: other manufacturer do it too, it is called "Matrix headlights".

I find these a bit annoying, as I think the side effect is that they are basically main beam all the time otherwise, and only dim selectively.

Which is great and all, but means things like they are projecting FRICKIN' LASERS into people's homes (especially when turning) or if you are a pedestrian that it doesn't detect properly (e.g. at some distance down a cluttered urban road etc) you get someone driving at you with really very uncomfortably bright lights shining in your face (I get this a lot when running at night - perhaps the models detect a pedestrian walking but not jogging?).

I am sure it works great in controlled conditions (and I have seen YouTube videos out on the clear open road where it detects oncoming vehicles nicely) but it feels pretty ineffective and anti-social in an urban/suburban environment, at least to me.

Some cars already do this, like Tesla's Adaptive Headlights feature [1].

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_sg/GUID-1C20964...

> High beams are currently turned on, and Adaptive Headlights is ready to turn off the high beams if light is detected in front of Model 3.

The description makes it sound like the Tesla implementation of "Adaptive headlights" is actually just "automatic high beams". The most common extra feature of adaptive headlights is corner-adaptive, the ability to pivot into the direction of travel. For the past years adaptive headlights could even mean "smart headlights" with selective dimming. Does Tesla include these features as well?

Anecdotally I can say that what stands out with (some?) Tesla headlights is that they keep the high beams shining for way too long and even the low beams seem to be overly bright. I can't say if this is down to the driver manually controlling the high beams or the general calibration of the incoming light sensor and the auto leveling of the headlight.

Tesla's are the worst offenders outside of big trucks imo

I agree. I've got a Porsche Panamera and the headlights are too bright. At times people flash their headlights at me, thinking I've got my high-beams on: I then cannot do much else then quickly flash back the real high-beams to mean "sorry mate, no, these were the regular beams, THAT is the high-beams so stop flashing at me".

Now even the regular beams they sure do work fine (the car even does fancy stuff as lighting the interior of a turn when you take a sharp turn at night) but honestly I find many cars, including mine, have headlights to bright.

Worse: on these new cars with super fancy headlights if I'm not mistaken you cannot even configure where they aim at anymore. It's all automated. It used to be the case on older cars where it was easy to configure and you could aim the regular beam moderately low as to be sure to not annoy anyone.

I don't bother flashing at people anymore because I figured out they may simply have a car where the regular beams are simply too bright too.

Just in case - have you tried directing the beams down a bit? Not sure what the situation is on that model but there is a dial to the right of my wheel (right hand drive) which controls for this. Maybe worth investigating if you have something similar

I think one of the points of these "smart" systems is to do the aiming themselves and adjust to the conditions, including the vehicle's load.

My dad's 20yo Citroën had self-leveling lights, which weren't user adjustable (at least not in an obvious way). However, even though the lights were relatively bright (Xenon), nobody ever "complained" about them, they somehow always found a way to not blind oncoming cars while lighting the road very well.

They were fixed pattern, with the high beam on a manual switch, though, so they never tried to guess whether there was someone in the oncoming lane.

Don’t buy such an antisocial car next time?

With respect to trucks, it’s people who modify the trucks height and don’t readjust the lights. This should be enforced much more!

Lifted trucks should have a season, like deer season. Control the population.

With RPGs and Gatling Guns!

Fucking Teslas are pain in the rear. Even the stop lights on some models are so bright it burns a hole in the head every time you're behind one.

Adaptive driving / glare-free lighting is legal in the US and Canada now and is supposed to reduce that problem

Glad we got around to closing that barn door. It only took nearly twelve years from when adaptive headlights hit the market.

Heads should have rolled years ago when the problem became glaringly obvious.

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