Try as you might, it’s pretty tough to go blind staring at a strip of fluorescent office lights … But the wrong look at a raw LED or halogen can momentarily wreck your vision even indoors – despite the former outputting several hundred times more light. It’s an issue of luminous intensity vs luminous flux.

those are some great points. I wasn’t aware Germany required generator power for lights. As for the issue of the light on the bike or the person, I have asked local authorities who casually replied that to them a light is a light (not all officers may be this nice however, so I will look into it more).

As for the hyper-illumination, my opinion as a former automotive designer is that if car’s lights continue to get brighter and larger with each new model year, we as cyclists need to do our best to keep up. I have not increased the brightness or intensity of the lights in Torch, only the surface area that they light up.

Thanks again for everyone’s comments, it is nice to hear from cyclists who understand the laws and theory of light and safety.

Nathan

One problem with bike lights concerns forgetfulness: People forget to fix them when they are broken, and/or they forget to get new/recharge their batteries.

Another problem is that many students and poor people get cheap bikes, and struggle in some places to fulfil local requirements. German law requires gen-powered lights on any bikes over 11kilos — Dutch law is more liberal and allows less powerful battery lights as long as they are not in blink mode. Most EU country laws are closer to the Dutch ones, but mostly in that battery-power is okay. (A tangent: Lots of municipalities in the EU give away free small LED lights at the start of spring… but this is impossible in Germany due to the gen-law. So since so many people will simply not consider getting lights which cost the same as their flea market bike, they go without lights. So the law makes people less safe! (at least that’s my theory).

Please correct me if I am wrong in regards to Canada and most places in the USA, but illumination has to be based on the bike, not the rider, right? (Perhaps with the exception of foot or ankle reflectorized things instead of pedal reflectors for racing bikes….). So your helmet doesn’t even fulfil legal requirements.

More than that, it is what I call “hyper-illumination” (or “lux narcissism”): Your helmet makes other cyclists dimmer by comparison, and this unfair since they might be legally illuminated. The eyes of drivers adjust to the user of your helmet, and anyone less lit suffers. And that’s just the acute effects. The chronic one is that by getting more lit up, you make drivers used to it, and to demand more of it.

I have more about that last paragraph at this link http://greenideafactory.blogspot.de/2010/09/dont-believe-hyper-illumination.html but, to be certain, it’s just a theory I have and until it is proven by testing and research I will not demand that hyper-illumination should be forbidden. I will only advise against it.

should we stop innovation simply because one option exists on the market? Do you enjoy new bicycle designs as they improve riding every year? Then perhaps the safety apparel that people often opt not to use because it is cumbersome, inconvenient or doesn’t fit their style should enjoy the same opportunities.

we realize it’s not a road bike helmet, but most of the commuters we researched went for the skate style or similar helmets since they wanted a helmet to match their look and protect from weather. We will be considering larger and/or more air vents but so far the front and rear and top vents match most other commuter models and skate style models out there.

Thanks for your input though, we are appreciative of all of the feedback we are receiving.

Nathan Wills