Automotive signal lights have legal brightness limits; they’re deliberately designed to not dazzle the eye of passersby and other drivers. But of course those limits are formulated to neurotypical tolerances. A signal light that is tolerable to someone like @MarjaE might not be attention-getting enough (or even perceptible at the corner of the eye) to someone accustomed to a wider spectrum of tolerable lux levels. Majoritarian tyranny doesn’t always have easy solutions.
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If you drive a car down the middle of a highway, you’re an idiot.
I see a car straddling a lane divider at least once a day.
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I thought- and please do correct me if I’m wrong here- that automotive lights were capped by the wattage they could use (instead of Lumens)? Which was fine in the days of incandescent, but with HID’s and now LED and Laser headlights on (or coming) to the market, those numbers might not mean that much.
There are specified beam patterns, though- the cut off for the headlight beam can’t be above a specific spec and so on…
At least in every state I’ve lived in cyclists can be two abreast and block traffic, and on roads that cannot support a bike and a car at the same time the cyclist has to get as close to the white line as possible.
I haven’t used any of those things. However, I suspect I’d still have the 2-Hz or whatever cycle from turn signals, but the 120-Hz cycle from the device. Old crt monitors usually run at high frequencies. If I still had one, I could try to maximize refresh rates and minimize brightness and see whether my computer-based triggers change at all. Much easier than setting up a special device.
Oh, I’m sure that state laws vary, but there’s got to be a standard for cars sold in the USA, I’m sure. Could very well have been wattage, but I’d be surprised if that were still the case for the reasons you state. Let me see what I can find…
Ah, here we go. From the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards §571.108 Standard No. 108; Lamps, reflective devices, and associated equipment.
Looks like they measure Photometric Intensity rather than wattage.
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I think we can list many idiots we see every day, but the idiot in the car is more likely to live than an idiot on a bike.
I think we can all agree that improving roads (especially to prevent wrecks) for anyone using them is a very good thing.
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and more likely to kill.
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If a deer gets hit by a car traveling at legal speed, was the deer guilty of endangering the motorist? No, the motorist is responsible to drive at a speed such that they can avoid hitting an unexpected something or someone in the road.
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I used to ride bikes. And I still don’t understand the hostility to shared spaces for biking and walking. Some people complain that they’ve been run down by people on bikes. I haven’t, but I’ve been hit by one motorcycle, one suv, and one car while crossing the street.
Apart from that, we either need more mixed spaces with reduced speed, or separate spaces with adequate crossing places.
Given my disabilities, I’d rather have separate spaces away from cars, and away fro those strobe-armed carts, and adequate crossing places. If I’m hit by a strobe or a backup beeper, then I’m not going to be able to get out of the way of an oncoming truck. One may cause me to stumble into it. And the other will hammer me to the ground.
Given my disabilities, crosswalks at intersections are not adequate crossing places for me. There are too many flashing lights from all directions, there are turning cars, and so on.
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My understanding had been that this was because in most places you’re driving on the right, and signaling with your left hand. The (IMO mistaken) assumption was that if you need to brake and signal at the same time it’s best to have that be the rear brake.
Are you in the UK (where the signalling hand would continue to be the front brake hand), or another part of Europe where my theory above would obviously not apply?
This is what i think is the biggest part, or at least so i thought before reading @Donald_Petersen’s thoughts about balance.
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Well, the deer that I hit personally wasn’t on my road - it was on I-95, and the deer ran across five lanes of heavy traffic and flung itself into my path when I was less than twelve feet from it. It pretty much appeared out of nowhere, from my perspective, leaping out from in front of the car just ahead of me. So I would say yes, absolutely, that deer was at fault, and endangered the hell out of me.
I suspect a fair number of the roadkills on my road happened in similar fashion.
So I have to drive under 2mph at all times, under all conditions. That won’t work. I don’t live on Piccadilly Circus.
But we kind of got off in the weeds with the deer thing. Deer are not spectacularly clever, and are not legally using the road anyway.
I think that would be sensible, but I have never heard of such a thing in the USA.
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There are absolutely roads in the US which ban cyclist- usually anything divided and/or multi lane.
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And there are some which don’t explicitely ban bikes, but require a minimum weight to trigger the left turn light…
*clicks on post out of sheer curiosity, has this response:
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I’ve not seen an actual weight based sensor here in California in decades. Just magnetometer loops.
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Those, too, often have trouble recognizing the presence of bikes, and even some motorcycles, it seems.
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I grew up with that expression and made sure it was one of the first curse words I taught my kids. (cuz you gotta teach 'em that shit, otherwise who knows what they’ll bring home…)
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