Quote Originally Posted by crazycanuck View Post
Please..please pleeeeese have your front lights on solid. I can't say how often i am blinded year round by cyclists who don't understand what ít's like to have one pointed directly at me/etc. You do know how hard they are on the eyes.. AGHGHGH..

Don't tell me you can actually see with a blinking white light..

Just have the front white light on solid..please!!!
After playing around with the Stella for the past week or two, you actually can see pretty well with the light on strobe/blinky mode. It's the oncoming ninjas and other folks that catch heck...

One of the main reasons to run the light in blinky mode is the power savings on your battery... whereas the Stella and similar lights will run about 5 hours on steady bright (full power), it will run nearly 100 hours on a charge in blinky mode. Most of your "good" lights are only useful for about 2 hours on a single charge; if you're going to be out for awhile and aren't sure when and where your next charge is coming from, you can stretch your lighting a substantial bit by running in blinky mode. The Stella, Vega, and similar lights run on a steady strobe (which can definitely be annoying from the opposite side of the trail); the Dinotte models will blink in different pulses, which is just as visible, but less irritating.

What I've found to work well for the average commute or night training/recreational ride is to run a steady white headlight, and then have one of the small Knog lights on the handlebar running in blinky mode. Good light to see by, and it's not as irritating to your fellow trail users.

Light pollution (not only from bike headlights and folks like me who like to try and burn a hole in the ozone layer with my lights) can be a problem. Unshielded parking lot and especially stadium lights can blind you to what's actually out in front of you on the trail. Motorists will hit you with their bright lights trying to figure out what that is way up in front of them.

If you're blinded by someone else's oncoming headlights or overbright street lights / athletic field lights, don't look directly into the beam. Look off to one side and use your peripheral vision. I wear an MTB helmet most of the time when I'm out at night, and the advantage is that it has a visor, and I can use that to help block a blinding light, sort of like a sun-shade in the car or the bill of a baseball cap. Another handy trick to protect your night vision is one that I learned as an artillery officer at Fort Sill's School of Fires: Close one eye. Yep, it’s as simple as that. When you’re in the dark and headed for a bright spot, or vice versa, close one eye for a half minute — once you get to back into the dark, open that eye and you’ll have your night vision and will be able to see that pedestrian or the patch of loose gravel.

Tom