How much light is too much light?

When I am at home I ride to work from mandurah to the navy base on garden island. The security guards on the main gate before the bridge are full on about making sure the cyclists are brightly lit when transiting onto the island. Because of this I have been using the moon set up. It's a brand my bike guy down in mandurah put me onto. The brand is moon and the front and back are called the meteor and the comet. I have not done a night XC race yet and I am looking forward to doing one with these lights. Easy rubber straps, USB rechargeable, bright as a 1000 suns. Only like 150-160 for the pair from memory. Good strobe function as well as 3 brightness levels. I reckon I'd use two during a night race I think, one on the bike and one on the helmet.

I tell you what, is happily strap 20 of the red ones to my back if it ment the trucks on the highway would move over an extra foot or two when they fly past me at 100k plus.

Is that a pic of you hawkeye? Great action shot! I love those great night photos.

I once tried to get a pic of myself from a professional photographer at an 8 hr race. He never returned any emails...

Just noting that lights have been an ongoing concern of many residents near tracks and also by managers of national parks and conservation reserves.

Tasmania has led the way by deferring any decision until evidence confirms there is an impact on nocturnal animals.

In Sydney with NPWS and Manly Dam we have been pointing to studies showing that lights under 50W meet best practice guidelines for night time Eco Tourism which is promoted on government websites. What 50W is has become a but grey given LED lights with very different efficiencies.

We have also discussed restricting night time riding to before 10pm as a fall back position if night riding is out of question. A 10pm curfew sits well with other State legislation.

I'm not sure we're there yet, but if the technology keeps advancing at the current rate (Moore's Law) I think you're right, an upper limit on outputs at some stage soon is inevitable.

The advice not to look directly in the beam has a strong element of CYA (cover your arse), but people have been known to do stupid things and if you were to stare into it on full grunt for a length of time, yeah you'd probably get a similar effect to looking directly at the real sun. "Well, it's in the notes so you can't say you weren't warned. You want to sue us? Good luck with that."

While the output is probably similar to a car headlight somewhere below high beam, the issue as I see it is the light is being emitted from such a tiny area (compared to say car headlight reflectors) that the point intensity for the onlooker is painfully high.

Wish I could get by with my old Ay-Ups. Perhaps they're getting a bit tired, more likely my one night a year of riding flat out on singletrack means that level of comfort will continue to elude me without a big-ass light.