Lights, brilliant but stupid
Posted on Sunday 6 December 2009 by Martin Hayman
“So how do you manage to keep your front light pointing straight?” Keith enquired awhile back, gesturing at my slim Cateye front light.
“Ah yes, I rebuilt it with a proper Cateye bracket you can buy as a spare. From Germany.”
Looking around, I noticed several of our squad had these lights. All but mine, I noted, hung down sadly, pointing at the front wheel rather than the road ahead. This seemed a sorry state of affairs, because we all use our bikes in town, in the dark, and in rain.
Modern LED lights are literally brilliant, but why are their fixings so crap? Long gone are the days when incandescent bulbs would burn through a set of batteries in less than one week’s moderate commuting. Today’s lights go on forever on a set of small batteries, and weigh much less. Supporting them on the bike so they point in the right direction should be easy-peasy. Instead, every model year brings a crop of even less-effective straps and thumbscrews in flimsy plastics and neoprene, needing immediate augmentation with Blu-Tack or Band-Aid.
And the rears are just as bad. On today’s jaunt, skimming along a country road atop the North Downs, off flew my (expensive) multi-LED rear, firmly hooked, I had thought, into the rear bag loop provided for the purpose; in fact the light fixing had jounced out of its own bracket, leaving the clip hooked in. Fortunately, the light was OK. Later, as we pushed on towards on our lunch stop in Lingfield, I waited and waited for Gerard and Angela (my meagre squad for the day); when they turned up, it was with Angela’s busted rear light, identical to mine, flashing away in its death throes, having bounced off and smashed on the road. Oh dear.
Back in town, and feeling feisty after some pretty severe Kent hills, I was forging homeward up Gloucester Place when I heard the tell-tale clatter of my rear lamp hitting the deck…as I looked round in the hope of retrieving it, the closely pursuing double-decker crunched it underwheel.
This is not right. These lights are costly. Cheapening the fixings so the (very good) lights don’t work as they should is a cynical trick perpetrated by the manufacturer on its customers. Don’t buy into it, I say! (As those clever folks who have fitted Busch & Mueller lighting will tell you…endlessly.)
Oh, by the way, what happened to the four-star hard-core anyway? Duvet gotcha?