Combination LED taillight / CPSC reflector?

[Brownstone]

Back in 2002 I replaced all of the reflectors on my bicycles with CatEye TL-LD500 tail lights. It was the only tail light I could find at the time that was both a light and a CPSC approved reflector.

It seems like things should have improved a great deal in the past six years, but looking around I can still only find this light and the BLT Ultra Wazoo that combine both functions.

Are there any other reflector / LED combos?

 

[mechBgon]

Yes. The Planet Bike BRT-5 is like an LD-500 on steroids, MUCH more powerful. I consider them worth turning on even in the daytime. They now include two sizes of round mounting bands and also a rear-rack mount with it (finally), so it can be mounted on a seatpost, seatstay, or the rear rack (even a Euro-style bolt pattern is provided).

Another model that qualifies can be found under several brands, but is basically the same light. Nashbar "Brilliant" aka Performance Viewpoint Flashpoint aka Serfas 2100. And if you're a DX shopper, DealExtreme appears to have the same light for US$3.81

With any of these, take care to precision-aim them so the hot spot of the beam is aimed right at the viewer. I see far too many taillights aimed in inexplicable directions :shakehead


A couple other comments:

1) consider adding some good-quality reflective tape if you have some room and don't mind the appearance (I like to cut it into strips and stick it to fenders). It tends to reflect from much wider viewing angles than plastic cube-corner reflectors that rely on total internal reflectance. The wider viewing angle of reflective tape is beneficial in a variety of scenarios including point-blank range and side-on views, and you can vastly increase your reflective surface area too. In the photo below, you can see that the cube-corner DOT reflectors don't even hold a candle to the reflective tape, because the light is entering them at a significant angle and TIR isn't working. Identi-tape.com has a good selection of reflective tape.

2) if you're looking for longer-range detection from the rear (say, riding on a highway), then the non-wide-angle type of reflector would be a worthwhile addition if you have somewhere to attach them. They're large, and their entire surface is devoted to direct-rear reflection, not split three ways like a dinky CPSC wide-angle reflector is.

Remember, bikes have to be sold with CPSC reflector sets in the U.S., but that doesn't mean you're obliged to use them instead of another reflector which meets your state's visibility requirements.

 

[Cemoi]

What is this "Nova Bull" that looks so bright on your picture?
Is it brighter than the models you mentionned (Planet Bike and Nashbar Brilliant)?

The Planet Bike BRT-5 is like an LD-500 on steroids, MUCH more powerful

Isn't the Planet Bike Super Flash even brighter?

 

[TONY M]

Yes. The Planet Bike BRT-5 is like an LD-500 on steroids, MUCH more powerful. I consider them worth turning on even in the daytime.

I have a LD-500 and there are better alternatives.

 

[mechBgon]

What is this "Nova Bull" that looks so bright on your picture?
Is it brighter than the models you mentionned (Planet Bike and Nashbar Brilliant)?

The Nova BULL: http://www.bullled.com It's a baby-sized emergency-vehicle strobe with three 1W Luxeons (red, in my case). Naturally, it absolutely annihilates all of the other models I mentioned, but requires custom mounting and an external battery pack. See this thread for some comparison beamshots: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=197538

This YouTube video begins with a shot of the BULL and SuperFlash, if you want to see them in operation together. The only production taillights competing with the BULL are the DiNotte 140R, and the DiNotte triple taillight (which is their 600-lumen headlight equipped with red LEDs). Whelen makes a similar LED strobe called the TIR3 which comes in both horizontal-mount and vertical-mount versions, and probably has similar output, but I haven't tried one. Yet.

Isn't the Planet Bike Super Flash even brighter?

The SuperFlash is brighter than the BRT-5, and I think the Brilliant/FlashPoint/2100 falls between the two. The drawback to the SuperFlash is that its lens doesn't function as a reflector, so it gets beaten by even the feeble LD-500 in that respect. Other than that, the SuperFlash is one of my favorite lights, and I usually run one clipped to the rear crossbar of my helmet to show over the tops of cars when I'm entrained in city traffic (and to provide a backup if my primary taillight goes down).

At work, I kept pushing for us to carry the BRT-5, and the ordering guy pointed at the wall full of 10 other kinds of red blinkies. I have to keep emphasizing that none of them combine a light and a reflector. In my state, having a taillight is fine, but you still must have a reflector too, so a dual-duty light/reflector is nice, especially if it's got enough power to catch peoples' eye even in the daytime.

My primary reason for covering the reflector requirement, is to ensure that my legal bases are covered if someone hits me at night. I don't want to be technically non-street-legal and have someone's lawyer get them off on the technicality. When it comes to actually being seen, the active lighting is the primary defense.

 

[Brownstone]

It looks like I have more options than I thought I did. I think I didn't find those other lights in my googling because they don't have CPSC in their description. But as long as the are CPSC certified they will work for me.

In general I don't like to ride after dark and pretty much always avoid it. But you never know when a flat tire or something is going to delay your ride, and things could stretch into dusk.

I also do a fair bit of long-distance touring, which can certainly make the ride times unpredictable. What do you do when you get to your planned campsite, and find it is closed, and the next available location is 40 miles down the road? You keep riding, that's what you do (or you find a farmer and beg to camp on their land).

Anyhow, CPSC is very important to me. Since I travel multiple states I need one reflector/light that will be legal everywhere. With CPSC I know I have that requirement met.

mechBgon, of the five lights you posted I think the Serfas TL-2100 is the one for me. It is the only one that is AA powered (the others all use AAA). When bicycle touring I strongly prefer that all my electronics use the same size batteries, so the same set of spares will work everywhere.

Thanks a ton!

P.S. - Has anybody just tried soldering better LEDs into the Cateye?

 

[mechBgon]

With CPSC I know I have that requirement met.

I want to touch on this assumption. In my state, like most, you don't have to have a CPSC-approved reflector per se. You have to have a reflector that is visible from a certain distance under certain conditions. The CPSC approval does nothing to guarantee that the reflector will meet the actual performance requirements laid down by the laws in the states you're cycling in. CPSC approval is purely to make the bike legal for retail sale in the United States and that is all it guarantees. Look at the actual laws in the states you visit, and you'll probably see what I'm talking about... and I'd bet that a DOT non-wide-angle reflector will meet any of the performance requirements far better than a CPSC reflector would.

Point in case: you have a CPSC-approved reflector and it's visible from the certain distance under the certain conditions, as required by the local laws where you're riding. Then you ride through some muddy slime on the shoulder of the road, it covers up a fair amount of that dinky little CPSC-approved reflector, and now it isn't visible from the certain distance under the certain conditions anymore. This is where having a fender with a large swath of DOT Class II Conspicuity Tape really stacks the odds in your favor, in terms of maintaining the performance requirements of the local laws.

For what it's worth, I heard that the Performance/Nashbar/Serfas/DX light is not tops in reliability as far as the light itself goes. But anyway, glad I could help with the search The point I'm trying to make, is that it couldn't hurt to go considerably further than just getting a taillight with a reflector built in, and thinking you're done. Redundancy and overprovisioning are good.

 

[Brownstone]

The CPSC approval does nothing to guarantee that the reflector will meet the actual performance requirements laid down by the laws in the states you're cycling in.

You are right, of course, but I still look at the CPSC approval as meaning something useful. If nothing else, showing the CSPC logo to a sheriff could help assure him that "yes, this is a reflector". If nothing else, CSPC approval could be used in a court of law to prevent an opposing attorney from claiming I had made myself "unsafe" by removing the approved safety gear.

My number one night riding plan is to not ride at night.

Barring that, my touring rig provides a blinky taillight, reflective tape on all four panniers, and I'll throw a reflective orange triangle on my back. Not as much as I could have, but better than nothing.

 

[mechBgon]

If your touring bike happens to have regular bar plugs in the ends of the handlebars (as opposed to bar-end shifters, mirror, etc), one other item you might like is bar-end blinkies. They add almost zero weight, they're unobtrusive in appearance when turned off, and they give you two additional taillights at the edges of your bike, presenting "width" to the viewer. Performance, Nashbar and Serfas all rebadge these too:

I have a set of these on my road-racing bike. Each one is considerably more powerful than an LD-500, provided the tips of your handlebar allow the hotspots of the lights to hit the viewer.

As for showing the sheriff a reflector with a certification, I'd rather be showing 'em DOT than CPSC, but that's just me Or in true CPF tradition... "one of each" :twothumbs

 

[mechBgon]

One other note: there was a case some years ago where a man was killed riding in twilight conditions around here. The newspaper specifically mentioned that the Highway Patrol tested his reflector to see if it met the performance requirements (and it did not), which in my state are:

(1) Every bicycle when in use during the hours of darkness as defined in RCW 46.37.020 shall be equipped with a lamp on the front which shall emit a white light visible from a distance of at least five hundred feet to the front and with a red reflector on the rear of a type approved by the state patrol which shall be visible from all distances up to six hundred feet to the rear when directly in front of lawful lower beams of head lamps on a motor vehicle. A lamp emitting a red light visible from a distance of five hundred feet to the rear may be used in addition to the red reflector. A light-emitting diode flashing taillight visible from a distance of five hundred feet to the rear may also be used in addition to the red reflector.

So in the scenario where I do get hit, hopefully they'll find that at 600 feet in lawful lower-beam headlights, they could practically bring in a single-engine aircraft for a landing on my bike

 

[Brownstone]

If your touring bike happens to have regular bar plugs in the ends of the handlebars (as opposed to bar-end shifters, mirror, etc), one other item you might like is bar-end blinkies.

Those are a great idea, but as it turns out I have bar-end shifters on the touring bike. That's pretty common for loaded tourers, for the reason I'm about to explain.

I've got the chainrings set-up with mountain bike gears. Shimano doesn't make any road-bike shifters that will reliably shift the mountain bike front derailleur, so Ultegra bar-ends were the best my mechanic and I could come up with.

A secondary nice feature of bar-ends is they can be switched to friction mode if index mode stops working. Nice if you are a week's ride from a bicycle mechanic.

I did see those blinkies somewhere else and liked the idea though.

 

[mechBgon]

I've got the chainrings set-up with mountain bike gears. Shimano doesn't make any road-bike shifters that will reliably shift the mountain bike front derailleur, so Ultegra bar-ends were the best my mechanic and I could come up with.

The usual workaround is to pair up the road-bike shifters with a road-triple front derailleur intended for 9-speed drivetrains (e.g. 4400 and 4500-series Tiagra, 5500-series 105, 6500-series Ultegra, 7700-series Dura Ace) which still shifts OK on mountain cranks. That's how I plan to set up my Surly Long-Haul Trucker if/when I get it: XT or LX trekking cranks, Ultegra triple front derailleur, Tiagra shifters. But bar-end shifters are great too, and have that non-index option for bailout.

Now if only the gubmint would send me that $600...

 

[Cemoi]

one other item you might like is bar-end blinkies

Looks interesting, unfortunately they require special, non rechargeable batteries.
Do you know if turn signals exist with a similar design: inserted in bar-ends, no wires, switched on using a small integrated switch operated with the little finger?

 

[TONY M]

mechBgon, will a Ultegra (6603) triple front mech work well with the shimano mtb chainsets? Or would I need an older 9 speed front mech?

Thanks

 

[mechBgon]

The cage on the 6600 family is quite narrow, intended for very narrow 10-speed chains, so while it would line up with the chainrings click-for-click, the wider 9-speed chain would tend to rub on the cage a lot as you shift back & forth across the rear gear cluster. The shifters do have trim clicks to help eliminate rub, but one hopes not to have to use them incessantly :tinfoil:

I should rummage around the shop and see if we have an Ultegra 6503, before they all vanish.

 

[mechBgon]

Looks interesting, unfortunately they require special, non rechargeable batteries.
Do you know if turn signals exist with a similar design: inserted in bar-ends, no wires, switched on using a small integrated switch operated with the little finger?

Not that I've seen. You're right, the fact that these bar-end lights use two button cells each, would make them expensive to use as a daily-driver taillight. Trek does have a bar-end light (one model for road, one for mountain) which uses a single AAA. I use the mountain-bike version on my commuting bike as auxiliary taillights/side-marker lights (they're visible from the sides as well)... here's a quick shot of the Trek bar-end blinkies and the Planet Bike BRT-5 for comparison (all running steady-on for photography purposes).

 

[mkrabach]

I could not help reading this thread with interest having done about 18,000 miles of self-contained touring. (www.krabach.info) I also in the past found myself without a good light, forging on to the next campsite. I wish I had the lights that I have recently made and modified, back then. My last trip was an Alaska tour in 2000. I strongly agree with mechBgon on his advice with reflectors. As a tourer you should have fenders and of course bar-end shifters. That negates any binky light in the ends of the handlebars which suffer from directionality. If they limited are to backward visibility, you might as well subsitute them with good reflector tape. Yes, check out identi-tape.com. I have loaded my bikes up with the 3-M SOLAS tape because it contours over the fenders, frame and my helmet nicely. I have a page on reflector tape.
http://www.krabach.info/bike_light/reflectors.html

You asked if there was any way to modify a cateye? I don't know but I just recently modified (prototype 12) a Vistalite VL500 that works better than any commercial rear flasher I've seen. I just now see the thread on the Nova Bull. I'll match it with my 3 watt Prototype 10. But unfortunately it is a little fragle which leaves me looking for a way to enclose it. But the Vistalite mod is still good enough. I also have updated "My Bike Light Project" just yesterday, and is posted here on the forum. Here is a link to the beamshots. Look down for Prototypes 10,11,12, which also have video beamshots.
http://www.kayakaccessri.info/krabachwebsite/bike_light/bike_light_project/light.html

If and when I go on another tour I will take my front light, Prototype 4, which uses 4 AA batteries, lasting 3 hrs, and the rear flasher, Prototype 12, which uses 1 AA battery, lasting 6 hrs. I also carry a mini-mag style mod (Cree XR-E 7090 at 500ma) rated for 3 hrs on my helmet. All use AA which you can purchase almost anywhere, which should suffice for an late night detour to the food store, or next camping site, or searching for a place to pitch the tent in the dark.

And of course I realize that not everyone likes to make their own bike lights, which means not all of these suggestions may be useful.

 

[Cemoi]

Another model that qualifies can be found under several brands, but is basically the same light. Nashbar "Brilliant" aka Performance Viewpoint Flashpoint aka Serfas 2100. And if you're a DX shopper, DealExtreme appears to have the same light for US$3.81

Are all these really the same light, considering the huge price range:

• $15 at Nashbar (looks slightly different here, no white part in the "optics")
• $13 at performancebike
• $30 at Serfas
• $<$4 at DX

Taking a close look at the pictures, the DX and PB versions do look identical, whereas the Serfas seems slightly different.
Can a $30 and a $4 be really the same quality? Several users on DX complain about the very loose button and a useless square hole in the back making the light absolutely not waterproof, do the other versions also have these defects?

 

[mechBgon]

Are all these really the same light, considering the huge price range:

• $15 at Nashbar (looks slightly different here, no white part in the "optics")
• $13 at performancebike
• $30 at Serfas
• $<$4 at DX

Taking a close look at the pictures, the DX and PB versions do look identical, whereas the Serfas seems slightly different.
Can a $30 and a $4 be really the same quality?

They can, if you mark the $4 light up to $30 and sell it for an outrageous profit...

Several users on DX complain about the very loose button and a useless square hole in the back making the light absolutely not waterproof, do the other versions also have these defects?

Read the reviews at Performance Bike and you see complaints about the quality there, too. The questionable quality & reliability of those lights is one reason I have three Planet Bike BRT-5's and zero of the Performance/Nashbar/Serfas/DX light. I usually have more than one taillight running, and sometimes up to five (two bar-end lights, the Nova, the SuperFlash on my helmet, and a BRT-5 clipped to my trunk bag) but I'm not interested in lights that turn themselves off, fall apart, or get brittle in cold weather.

I have loaded my bikes up with the 3-M SOLAS tape because it contours over the fenders, frame and my helmet nicely. I have a page on reflector tape.
http://www.krabach.info/bike_light/reflectors.html

Cool! :twothumbs

 

[znomit]

I bought some cheap front and rear lights from DX. They look like some lights at the LBS but they are rubbish. Poor finishing and poor materials. Maybe thats what makes up the big difference.