Crash Report-------New Light

F

flyer1

Guest
I have been reluctant to buy a light as I rarely travel after dark except for a 20- mile roundtrip on Tues. evening that has been up-til-now a twilight affair, stll dangerous but doable.

L.S.S. I drove off the bike-path and flipped over the handlebars in basically pitch-black conditions.This is after making freq. stops for safety reasons I w disoriented by the passing car headlights.No streetlights in the area.I told myself a week earlier I "must" get a light, but put it off.

It feels like I may have severely bruised if not broke a rear rib, difficult breathing,rising up,etc.I'll survive.

I purchased the Bike Planet Blaze 1-watt, not too bad for $32.00, but you have to keep your speed down around 15mph or you'll out run the light.This is my second, and hopefully last "incident" with the m.b.
I'm getting too old for this ****!
 
well - glad that you are alive and will be riding again soon

I noticed the other morning (early and dark) how my little light

does not do a whole lot of lighting

slow it down Mountainman as in the dark you --

ride that thing
 
This should give u a better idea of the setup....both front & rear are LED's & the front are focused LED's with a tight beam of over 1Km.
p1010071.JPG

P1010075.JPG
 
I have the PlanetBike lights - Blaze in the front, Superflash in the rear. I run them in flash mode anytime I'm riding, and I definitely get noticed much earlier by drivers looking anywhere near my direction.

That said, you need *much* more light than the 1W Blaze LED puts out to drive at night. I'm barely comfortable pedaling around the block at low speed with the Blaze to light my way -- no way you'd catch me under power with that as my sole light source.

I don't have the link immediately at hand, but I saw a project where someone rather ingeniously wired up some 12VDC MR-16 halogen spot bulbs inside conduit couplers as a casing, then ran them off of a sealed lead-acid battery. That's the direction I'm leaning since I have a new-in-box 7Ah SLA battery to put to work.

IMHO, if you're not throwing several hundred lumens down the road, you're probably not properly equipped to be riding in the dark under power. Better to throttle back to <10mph, switch to pedal power, or even call for someone to come pick you up, than to end up eating gravel alone in the dark.

-AG
 
A.G., I have many of the links bookmarked and will build on soon.I figure most of them will run around a c-note when all is said and done.I ride about 80% on a multi-use path insulated from vehicle traffic (main concern). I'll just have to keep it real slow until I can upgrade.
 
I read that most motorcycle wrecks happen at sun up or sun down. Due to the sun being in car drivers eyes and them not seeing you.
interesting !!!
 
AlphaGeek, a piece of info you might be able to use.

I'm running two 55 watt lights with a 14 amp/hr battery.

On one of the very first charges I ran it for 70 minutes and thought maybe I saw some dimming at the end of that time. Now that I've gone through a few dozen charges, it goes a solid 70 minutes with no dimming that I can tell. I don't know the total time on a charge yet. I haven't needed it. Though I ought to just let the thing run out and time it. It would be interesting.

Anyway, I'm guessing that you could get the same times out of one 55 watt light.
 
That's very helpful, thanks. My commute is less than an hour worst-case (i.e. I get stuck at a certain train crossing for 10+ minutes) so it sounds like I'll be in good shape with my 7Ah batteries. I actually have two of them, but for weight and space reasons I am planning to only mount one.

Have you posted any details regarding your light setup? I did a quick search of your posting history but couldn't find anything obviously related to your lighting.

-AG
 
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