Cycling UK Forum

I must admit when cycling home I use to blinded by lights, I now have glare reduction coating on my glasses and keep my cycle visor down more.. As to visibility I have a rest light that flashes and scents to laser light down on the road showing my width and two red light on my waist at eye level.cheap on Amazon. Blue lights on my wheels to be seen better side ways and a a good light that has three setting... I'm more visible but it's not that I find is the problem it's most drivers act and I get shouted get of the the road it's for cars... I love urbanite Britishness

I agree as time goes on one's eyes are only likely to get worse, but there are still enough vehicles with older style headlights around that I feel I am able to make a valid comparison.

The problem is that

a) the legislators only appear to be interested in the illumination at a distance yet

b) that an image of the source of all this illumination might be presented to someone else's eyeball has clearly never occurred to them.

Thus 'legal lights' can blind people if the source is small enough, even though the illumination they provide might be nothing special. Car designers are clearly excited by the prospect of having smaller lights, but if they really wanted to do road users a favour, they'd make the reflectors BIGGER, not smaller!!!!!!

I find that some lights (and that includes many legal ones on dip beam) actually hurt my eyes they are so small and so bright, in the same way as staring at the sun or a welding arc might be painful if you are stupid enough to do it.

I don't think there is anything much in the rules that legislates the source size, as if dazzling other road uses isn't ever going to be a problem....

cheers

Brucey wrote:I find that some lights (and that includes many legal ones on dip beam) actually hurt my eyes they are so small and so bright, in the same way as staring at the sun or a welding arc might be painful if you are stupid enough to do it.

cheers

+1
I've had to stop the bike and wait by the side of the road a few times till my eyes have recovered from being blinded. Extensive laser eye surgery has increased the blinding effect quite a lot but headlights on cars, vans etc are stupidly bright these days.

I put my hand up to block out dazzling lights but I do seem to be having to do it more and more often. That's despite usually being a fairly tall man on a fairly tall bike on a cycle track that's raised above the road!

While I find warm/neutral white projector headlamps in usual 2.5in size OK, a local bus had 2in ones, and they were horrible even under streetlamps (what does a bus need projector headlamps for?).

I have suggested to the UN-ECE that they ban cold white lamps* (only fair as they no longer allow harmless selective yellow dipped headlamps). *Because the eye is more sensitive to blue at night but intensity measurements like candelas do not allow for this; also I have read that blue light may cause some people more discomfort than even that would explain......

A dual filament headlamp only uses one half of the reflector for dipped beam, so counting the whole headlamp area in lit size might be unfair to other single filament lamps: would 60% of size be fairer?

Cycle lamps have also got smaller** and colder(blue-er):
I chose a Herrmans S-One v2 on grounds of it being less blue (neutral white) but the lens is still only 2in diameter compared to 3in of an old fashioned E6 etc.
My folder has a neutral white Stzvo Lidl battery lamp of similar diameter but this has an unshielded 1/0.5W LED front emitter* which I would prefer to avoid: is that bare emitter worse than a colder colour but shielded emitter?. *it would be more efficient and less dazzling with a side emitter but these seem rare now....

**I blame the fairly recent Stzvo front retroreflector requirement.....

I often see cars with only one bad dipped headlamp, which would suggest dazzle by misalignment (or broken stepper motors) rather than by design.

The seat leon LED headlamps seemed coldish white but not dazzling when I saw one under streetlamps (I was pleasantly surprised except for the colour). But I wish the marketing persons idea that cold white headlamps are 'cool' could be bypassed/overruled by technical persons...

I also wonder if clear lens dipped headlamps are as evenly illuminated as old fashioned fresnel lens ones?

Is there any motoring equivalent of CJ who would be able to point to/explain the relevant parts of the ECE headlamp rules to allow it to be seen if modern rubbish headlamps are due to oversight*** (and naughty lamp designers making use of it) or deliberate stupidity (Brucey's idea that they are specifying a sharper cutoff so that the main bright part of the dipped beam is less dipped below horizontal). Or a mix .

***Until recently car headlamps were always big so perhaps they did just assume that would continue; also cycle lamp standards just assumed cycle lamps would be smaller than those large car lamps and impose a lower above cutoff intensity limit.

[quote="SA_SA_SA"]I have suggested to the UN-ECE that they ban cold white lamps* (only fair as they no longer allow harmless selective yellow dipped headlamps). *Because the eye is more sensitive to blue at night but intensity measurements like candelas do not allow for this; also I have read that blue light may cause some people more discomfort than even that would explain...... /quote]My suspicions also concerning the blue end of the spectrum, especially how that is accounted for in the spill area of headlight beams - some eg early Jaguars IME, seemed particularly bad.