There IS a use for the blinding stobe mode!!!

gsxrac · Mar 2, 2009

Well we had about 10 inches of snow fall last night and we havent seen more that 3-4 inches at once in ohh say 7 years! Well lots of people decided it was a great idea to take 2 wheel drive cars and trucks out when they dont know how to drive!
I allways prepare for this because as soon as people around here see a raindrop or a snowflake they freak. Brought along about 50 feet of chain and a board or two, an axe, a shovel, and my light choice (as allways lately) was my M20! One person slid into a ditch right around a corner and the homeowners nearest came out and I put my M20 into strobe mode and handed it to him so he could stop traffic while I hooked up and extracted the guy. Long story short it worked great (except the two highschool girls out driving in their Accord who slammed on the brakes and threw the wheel to the right like 50 yards away when they saw the guy waving his arms and flashing them)
Pulled out 4 other vehicles last night also and used the same method and I officially dont hate the obnoxious strobe mode anymore :grin2:

carbine15 · Mar 2, 2009

Universal truth of flashlights #81... Strobe is useless.

dilbert · Mar 2, 2009

I used the strobe on my Fenix L1D on Halloween. I tied it to the wagon that I was toting the kids around in for increased visibility and also a fun Halloween effect.

I also use the strobe on my Proton Pro for added fun and effect when I play "monster truck show" with my sons. I flash the strobe around and say things like "Sunday.... Suuunday....Suuuuunday!" in my announcer voice while they drive the trucks over smaller cars or a Lego obstacle course.

I guess not as serious or helpful as yours, but good times were had by all.

deranged_coder · Mar 2, 2009

gsxrac said:
Long story short it worked great (except the two highschool girls out driving in their Accord who slammed on the brakes and threw the wheel to the right like 50 yards away when they saw the guy waving his arms and flashing them)

Heck, if I were a high school girl and some guy was in the street waving his arms and flashing me I'd panic stop too.

Oh wait, you meant flashing a light...

Judicious use of a strobe mode on a flashlight can indeed be useful for alerting others to potential danger ahead. There have been several threads mentioning that a strobe came in handy for directing traffic, avoiding getting run over by inattentive drivers while you are out jogging or walking the dog, drawing attention to yourself i.e. guiding someone to your location in a crowd, etc. This is why I like having a strobe feature on a flashlight as long as it is tucked out of the way and I will not accidentally activate it unless I need it. IMHO the Photon Freedom has the best UI for this.

65535 · Mar 2, 2009

It's a bad idea to use a fast strobe in public for a non life threatening emergency situation. A lot of people have bad reactions to a strobing light. Some people simply get headaches but it is relatively safe, others could go into shock.

You don't want that around cars on icy rods. Simply waving the light on a medium mode as to not blind people is the safest choice.

gsxrac · Mar 2, 2009

deranged_coder said:
Heck, if I were a high school girl and some guy was in the street waving his arms and flashing me I'd panic stop too.

Oh wait, you meant flashing a light...

Haha I guess my word choice wasnt the greatest

65535 said:
It's a bad idea to use a fast strobe in public for a non life threatening emergency situation. A lot of people have bad reactions to a strobing light. Some people simply get headaches but it is relatively safe, others could go into shock.

You don't want that around cars on icy rods. Simply waving the light on a medium mode as to not blind people is the safest choice.

That is a good point! But that would mean my strobe is once again usless:mecry:

PetaBread · Mar 2, 2009

:lolsign:

Bullzeyebill · Mar 2, 2009

gsxrac said:
Haha I guess my word choice wasnt the greatest

That is a good point! But that would mean my strobe is once again usless:mecry:

Maybe you can adjust your light to a different strobe frequency rate, a slower rate. That is a feature on many lights. I would not negate the role for a good fairly slow rate strobe, or blink mode. As far as strobe lights go, the Hwy Patrol in my state has some pretty nasty strobes on their cars to warn people coming up on them from the rear, when they working a traffic stop. These are not pleasant to look at. Emergency vehicles have that effect too, and it certainly will get your attention. People sensitive to that kind of lighting are just going to have to suck it, and make their complaints when they can and talk to their physicians. Our OP, using a strobe, to alert people was a good idea, the best he could come up with at the time. People needed to see that from a distance as they need more room to slow down in snowy, icy conditions. Moving a light on medium mode back and forth or up and down in a very white environment may not have worked.

Bill

Chadder · Mar 2, 2009

The only thing I find the strobe good for is letting the kids dance to music until they are so tired they pass out and give me time to watch a good movie. I did this last weekend my sl stinger worked great!!

Mdinana · Mar 2, 2009

65535 said:
A lot of people have bad reactions to a strobing light. Some people simply get headaches but it is relatively safe, others could go into shock.

quote]

You know, this gets mentioned a lot here, but I want to clarify something, or rather, add my personal opinion. Cuz honestly, I don't see how this phrase can kept getting repeated without serious hard evidence.

If it were such a hazard, then emergency vehicles wouldn't have strobes. After all, the last thing they need is 20 cars with the drivers seizing as they drive by. When was the last time ANY of us have seen an emergency vehicle go buy, and suddenly a car swerve off the road with the driver in a full blown grand mal?

Another thing is that usually, once your attention is caught, the person doesn't really keep looking at the person with the light, but rather what the person is warning them about. At least, I think not.

Besides, anyone that's actually looking at the strobe long enough to get a headache is an idiot. And even dumber if they keep doing it after a headache.

Finally, most folks with seizures can't drive until they're adequately medicated for a certain length of time anyhow.

hyperloop · Mar 2, 2009

Bullzeyebill said:
Maybe you can adjust your light to a different strobe frequency rate, a slower rate. That is a feature on many lights.

As far as i know, only Jetbeams with the IBS UI have strobes whose frequency is programmable, which are the other makess??

I use my strobe at its lowest or near to lowest frequency as a blinker on my MTB and have another Jetbeam as my front light.

Search · Mar 2, 2009

What part of the world do you live in?

I'm in Milan, TN (Half way between Memphis and Nashville).

Were you part of this winter storm or were there others in other parts of the world I didn't know about

oronocova · Mar 2, 2009

Just some food for thought. I have pulled quite a few vehicles out of ditches and so forth in the past also.
However, my truck sits in my driveway damaged since last Thanksgiving. Why? Because the person I helped, after being freed from the ditch, decided to floor it and fly backwards into my truck.
Of course this is not totally their fault, I could have been more assertive with instructions regarding what was about to take place when I pulled him out. But it was obviously mostly on them, and luckily three EMS workers and one state trooper witnessed it. But still, my truck sits cosmetically damaged waiting on his insurance to own up.
Just something to consider if you have not, because I know I had not considered it until this happened to me. I would help anyone again at any time but you can bet I will be more careful about how I help them and about assessing their abilities before I actually do. In fact I probably will never do anything like this again unless it's family or someone's life is in eminent danger.
I think helping someone is always the right thing to do, but just be careful. It's easy to hurt yourself while helping someone else.

gsxrac · Mar 2, 2009

Search said:
What part of the world do you live in?

I'm in Milan, TN (Half way between Memphis and Nashville).

Were you part of this winter storm or were there others in other parts of the world I didn't know about

I live in Mechanicsville Va (bout 10 minutes from Richmond) And we got hit pretty hard. Me and my gf were riding toward home and the whole sky and EVERYTHING around us lit up this intensley blue color for about 3o seconds straight (transformers blowing or a tree laying on a line, dont know which? And we get up to the light and there's a cop with is spotlight in the air spining it back and forth and then he shines it at a transformer and I see 2 cables dangling there and DONT see the other ones so I looked up to see where there werent any overhead powerlines and floored it in reverse and right as I did a cable beside us (not even 15ftsparked and fell and I spun around and ran through the parking lot and onto the main highway on the other side.

It was pretty crazy and id only ever seen one transformer blow before yesterday. The sky was lighting up blue for a few hours straight. I think just because of how dense the fog was it was reflecting everything?

oronocova said:
Just some food for thought. I have pulled quite a few vehicles out of ditches and so forth in the past also.
However, my truck sits in my driveway damaged since last Thanksgiving. Why? Because the person I helped, after being freed from the ditch, decided to floor it and fly backwards into my truck.
Of course this is not totally their fault, I could have been more assertive with instructions regarding what was about to take place when I pulled him out. But it was obviously mostly on them, and luckily three EMS workers and one state trooper witnessed it. But still, my truck sits cosmetically damaged waiting on his insurance to own up.
Just something to consider if you have not, because I know I had not considered it until this happened to me. I would help anyone again at any time but you can bet I will be more careful about how I help them and about assessing their abilities before I actually do. In fact I probably will never do anything like this again unless it's family or someone's life is in eminent danger.
I think helping someone is always the right thing to do, but just be careful. It's easy to hurt yourself while helping someone else.

Well my truck is a 98 and its all torn up from years of mudding and trail riding. Ive been rear-ended I think 6-8 times now and theyve yet to do any damage accept scratch my bumper a bit? But Yep I hear what your saying. I was helping a Pontiac out and he was lodged on a hill and we had 3 lifted trucks with mud tires on em and this guy pulls up in a 08(I think, one of the new design judging by the headlights) Escalade EXT with 24 inch rims and low profile tires and holers out "Hey you guys got a tow rope Ill give you a pull!" He was being completly serious. I told him there was nowhere to hook to and he said "Allright well let me go park and I will find somewhere!" And now the owner of the vehicle procedes to find me a place to hook up and where else would he point out but the freakin trunk latch! People should really just keep to themselves sometimes lol. They have no idea how dumb they sound lol.

Flying Turtle · Mar 2, 2009

hyperloop said:
As far as i know, only Jetbeams with the IBS UI have strobes whose frequency is programmable, which are the other makess??

I use my strobe at its lowest or near to lowest frequency as a blinker on my MTB and have another Jetbeam as my front light.

The LiteFlux LF3XT has programmable strobe and beacon. You can adjust either for brightness and frequency.

Geoff

GreyShark · Mar 3, 2009

I haven't found a strobe offer any advantage over just a bright light when sparring. It's too bad because years before there was a Gladius I was a proponent of a strobing flashlight for self defense. Strobing does have its uses though so I do like having a momentary, which can be used for both intermittent lighting and strobing in a wide variety of speeds and patterns. Morse or other code even.

I knew two girls who had epilepsy, strobing light really could make them have a seizure. At least potentially. They took medicine to help prevent it and were familiar with what frequencies caused it. Interestingly they said even if the seizure looked bad it didn't feel bad. They said coming out of it felt like waking up from a long nap. Still you could obviously get hurt during a seizure. I'd lean towards being conservative in the use of strobes in public.

65535 · Mar 3, 2009

Emergency vehicles have a flashing light but I would not consider it a blinding strobe like flashlights that are designed to disorient and blind.

A flashing light is an excellent idea, a blinding bright quick strobing light isn't.

The only light I have that strobes is a Novatac 120P and it is extremely disorienting to some people. It would be my last choice when trying to stop traffic. Simply waving a flashlight in order to make an effective flashing light is a far better idea.

My personal opinion is that a light is a great idea, but a tactical strobe as most lights are programmed for that have a strobe mode is a bad idea. It was designed to throw people off. Not something I want to happen to people racing towards me on poor road conditions.

Bullzeyebill · Mar 3, 2009

Another way to use a strobing light as an attention getter would be to diffuse the light, and reduce the output. Also, aim the light toward the ground. I guess you can see that I am not condemning people, or making them wrong for using a strobe light to handle emergency type situations. Use it responsibly, and don't aim it at people.

Bill

deranged_coder · Mar 3, 2009

Bullzeyebill said:
Another way to use a strobing light as an attention getter would be to diffuse the light, and reduce the output. Also, aim the light toward the ground. I guess you can see that I am not condemning people, or making them wrong for using a strobe light to handle emergency type situations. Use it responsibly, and don't aim it at people.

Bill

Agreed. As I said in my earlier post in this thread, judicious use of a strobe mode on a flashlight can be useful. IMHO to make a blanket statement that strobes are always a bad idea in an emergency situation sounds like throwing out the baby with the bath water. :shrug:

I also think you make a good point about the output. A tactical strobe pointed directly at someone's eyes at close range would probably easily disorient someone but from several hundred feet away and with the light pointed towards the ground, probably not so much.

importculture · Mar 3, 2009

[/quote]Judicious use of a strobe mode on a flashlight can indeed be useful for alerting others to potential danger ahead. There have been several threads mentioning that a strobe came in handy for directing traffic, avoiding getting run over by inattentive drivers while you are out jogging or walking the dog, drawing attention to yourself i.e. guiding someone to your location in a crowd, etc. This is why I like having a strobe feature on a flashlight as long as it is tucked out of the way and I will not accidentally activate it unless I need it. IMHO the Photon Freedom has the best UI for this.[/quote]

Totally agree. I think strobe is a great feature as long as it doesn't get in the way of more used features. Although I prefer the 120p's UI. I have the strobe feature programed into the momentary-on while on memory space. I've used it many times to help a friend find me in a crowd or parking lot or movie theatre.

The good and bad thing about the novatac's strobe is that it isn't as bright as other strobes although I do like that the strobe pulse is much quicker which in turn make it appear less bright.

There IS a use for the blinding stobe mode!!!

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