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Comment by tpm | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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!

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.

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.

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

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

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!

>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_....

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...

> 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.

> 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...

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.

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.

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.

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