I’ve been riding on rural and small town roads for several years now with pretty good success. I haven’t been hit!! That is not to say that there are not some real bone-headed drivers – there most certainly are plenty of those.
I bought a cheap red light a long time ago and only used it occasionally until this spring. I then started trying to use it every ride. I’ve probably achieved 80-90% use. The light is far from bright but is something – which is better than nothing.
This spring I’ve had a couple heart skipping moments with cars attempting to re-arrange my body parts and decided that a front and rear light set may help. Researching this, I found that there are many good possibilities. I eventually decided on the “Knog Blinder 4” set and purchased from Amazon for about sixty bucks.
The Knog Blinder 4 LED light set is USB rechargeable. This was important to me as paying for new batteries all the time is very annoying. Charge me up front for a rechargeable please! Each light has four LED’s. The front white light produces 80 lumens, the rear red light 44 lumens. I’m not much of a lumenary expert but know that both of these lights seem mighty bright – actually kinda painful to look directly at them. They each have a nice integrated rubber strap and lever action clip. They fit very nicely and seem secure. The front light just barely fits on my carbon aero bar so be aware of that.
I’ve been riding with these lights for about a week. I’m not actually sure if they make a difference or not. I cannot imagine an oncoming vehicle cannot see them. If success is measured by not being hit by a car, they are working – knock on wood. I have used them only in blinking mode and have not ridden at night with them. In ‘full on’ mode (not blinking) the front white light produces a lot of light but it is somewhat dispersed so I’m not sure that it would be an ideal light to illuminate the path ahead (think flood light versus spot light).
Overall, the Knog Blinder lights seem like a pretty good deal, I am happy.
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