Bicycle Network Victoria: Ride On magazine

Parameters

Lights to be seen

The test is primarily concerned with judging the effectiveness of commuter bike lights in making bike riders visible. This visibility rating is then compared with the price of the unit. Two final recommendations are made: best visibility and best value option. The rationale is to survey the most economical and effective bike lights on the market.

Self-contained units

This test concerns clip-on, battery-powered LED lights where the batteries fit into the unit. The test does not include lights with an external battery pack, or dynamo-powered lights. All lights in the test will use new batteries.

Realistic scenario

The test will be conducted after sunset in an urban environment in line with Australian traffic regulations. For the front-on test, judges will be 200m from the lights as required by the road rules. For the angled test, lights will be displayed at an angle of 45 degrees to the judges. Judges will be 50m away to simulate visibility at an adequate distance for a car travelling at 50kmh to react and brake before hitting a bike rider.

Panel of authoritative judges

A panel of judges provides a range of opinions and a strong sample. Panellists are drawn from RACV, Bicycle Network Victoria, VicRoads Road Safety Unit, Victoria Police, bike shops, cycling clubs and Choice magazine.

The lights

Ride On has acquired lights from a range of suppliers for the purpose of this review. Wherever possible, models that are new since the date of our previous lights test have been acquired. All lights will be available at local bike shops in Victoria in time for the forthcoming winter.

Method

Lights will be labelled A, B, C, D, etc during the review so that brands and models will be unknown to the judging panel. The lights will be mounted on a horizontal stand positioned at an equal distance from the judges. Test staff standing at the lights will communicate by walkie-talkie with test staff coordinating the judges.

The winning lights from the previous year are used as the yardstick (or control) for the current test. The previous winner is displayed for five seconds, followed by a display of the first light in test for five seconds, and then the remaining lights in turn.

Front-on display

The lights will be mounted on a broomstick held by a stand at 200m from the judging panel. All front lights will be shown first and the rear lights will follow.

Judges will be given one opportunity to observe each light. Judges will rank the quality of the light on a scale of 1-10.

The judges will be able to request that certain light/s are shown again.

Angled display

Following the front-on display of lights, the stand will be moved 150m closer to the judging panel. The lights will be placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the judges and displayed in turn as per the front-on display.

Flash rate

The rate of flash of a light affects its effective visibility. To include this factor in this test we ask judges to score the flash rate of each light as well. This will be scored during the front-on display.

Where a light offers a range of flash modes, Ride On will determine the most effective and most visible of the range and display only this mode for the ‘flash rate’ category. Where a light does not have a flash rate, the light will be displayed in constant beam mode.

Results

The judges’ findings will be written up for the April-May issue of Ride On magazine by Ride On's resident Gear Guru.