Comments on: Illuminated travel

By: Fritz

Fritz — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:29:50 +0000

I just got the Reelights and will review them soon. A couple quick notes:

1. Sid’s obeservation that they go dark when stopping is correct, but I did see a version at Interbike last week that has a standlight capability.

2. The lights are a small and dim compared to modern battery operated blinkies.

3. My panniers obscure the rear light.

4. No batteries required, of course, and permanently mounted — there’s no quick release for these lights.

By: al

al — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:56:26 +0000

I lived in Denmark for a semester and most people had the little LED lights on their bike that come off easily because people will steal lights that are left on. Also, they had cool bike locks that were built on the tire.

By: gus

gus — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:04:41 +0000

My girlfriend has the lights. They must be used in conjunction with other lights. In NY the law states a white light in front visible from 300 feet and a red light in back visible from 100 feet. Any other lights only add to saftey.

By: Sid Morrison

Sid Morrison — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:36:54 +0000

A couple comments:
1. The Danish design looks intriguing, but it looks like if you come to a stop (at an intersection or wherever), the light will go out. That’s a major shortcoming! There needs to be a built in battery or super-capacitor to store enough charge during operation for a few minutes (at least) of stationary operation. It’s really dumb to omit this when the technology exists. It’s not practical for the old magneto driven incandescent systems, but for an LED system, it should be a no-brainer.
2. While the US doesn’t mandate DRLs, the majority of new cars have them. Public favor for them varies with the system in use. Some of the systems work via depowering the high-beams. These especially have poor aiming for DRL use – there’s a lot of annoying glare at oncoming drivers, even when depowered.
3. Also consider that there is a fuel economy cost to running headlights. It’s not huge, but it’s measurable, and compounded over an entire nation of vehicles, it would add up to a few hundred millions of gallons of fuel and billions of pounds of CO2 (for those who believe in global warming).
4. Finally, anything that the driver can’t manually disable in certain special instances is really annoying. I took an early (1999) DRL U.S. vehicle to a drive-in movie one time and after our film was over, we drove out. Most cars were able to do this under just parking lights (so as not to disturb viewers of an adjacent movie still in progress). My car had the stupid DRLs on and I thought a mob was going to kill me. Most systems are now disableable, but this one was not.