What factors determine how brightly my traffic wand will glow?

[Paul_in_Maryland]

A traffic wand, or traffic cone, is a cone-shaped piece of translucent plastic (orange or yellow) that captures a flashlight's beam to create a bright cone of colored light visible from all sides. I use one each day as I cross the street in Washington, DC, during my 28-minute walk between the train station and my place of work.

I've been using three cones with three lights:

• G&P T12 with 200-lumen 12V lamp assembly with Surefire 1.25-inch orange cone
• Streamlight TL-3 with Stinger/TL-3 orange and yellow cones
• Streamlight Stinger with 3x168 cells and axial bulb and Stinger/TL-3 orange and yellow cones.

The G&P seems brighter than the same-color Streamlight, but I'm not sure why.

Is it because its cone tapers more quickly, spreading the lumens over less sureface area?

Is it because its beam is more focused? That's doubtful.

Could it be that the Streamlight cones are too thick and simply don't pass as much of the light?

The Streamlight yellow cone seems as bright as the Surefire.

Anyway, what factors determine the brightness of a traffic wand? I'm thinking that the most important factors are

• the angle of the flashlight beam (the narrower, the better)--A flood light would squander the light in the first couple inches of the cone, leaving too little for the tip end.
• the length of the cone (the shorter, the brighter)
• the diameter of the cone (the narrower, the brighter)
• the transmissivity of the cone (the less opaque, the better).

That said, which cone is more likely to be noticed by a driver turning a corner:

• a long, semibright cone (more linear surface)?
• a wide, semibright cone (more sureface area)?
• a cone that's short and narrow, but very bright (a "light saber")?

What do the rest of you think? Do throwers work better with cones than floods do?