the high-tech art of riding a bicycle at night
Daylight Savings time has slipped away again despite a Congressional effort to extend it a month on either end, leaving the average person negative 30 minutes of daylight at the end of a work day.

So, what do you do to stay in shape and keep the winter depression at bay?

Why not do your own part to take back a little slice of the night and put it in the daytime column?

Innovative humans have been finding ways to see in the dark for as long as they’ve been humans, starting with campfires to ward off our natural, claw-bearing enemies. Thomas Alva Edison experimented with incandescence in the 19th century, and Peter Hewitt Cooper patented the fluorescent light in 1901.

The first flashlights were constructed in the 1890s, but flashlights, even most modern flashlights, are designed to see things that are close at hand. Bicycle lights tend to be more like car headlights than flashlights. Inexpensive lights work mainly as safety beacons for automobiles to see cyclists in the dark, while more powerful lighting systems can be used to see more distant obstacles.

Cyclists spent the entire 20th century experimenting with illumination, from early electric lanterns to headlights powered by generator wheels rubbing against a spinning tire. Now, any number of modern high-powered lighting systems use halogen, xenon, HID or even high-powered LED lights and batteries made of lead acid, Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) or Lithium Ion (Li-Ion).

There are lights that range from $20 to about $600 for a high-end system that will last for 8-10 hours per use and put your Audi’s high-performance Xenon headlight package to shame. Here are a few of the best at various price points.

light reviews
name, light type, battery type, total light/battery/mount weight, price

Blackburn Quadrant, 4 LED, 4 AA, 200 grams, $40 (set with 7-LED red flashing taillight)
Inexpensive LED lights are great for riding in town where there is plenty of ambient light and the main purpose is to be seen. The Quadrant offers four LEDs that can be solid, flash or half and half.

Petzl Tikka XP, 1-watt single LED, 3 AAA, 110 grams, $50
Bike lights don’t have to come from bicycle companies. The Tikka XP is a standard hiking and camping headlamp with elastic headband. Headlamps generally don’t cut it for cycling, but this one has a brighter, single-watt LED. It also has a simple diffuser sheet that slides in front of the light to spread the spot light out into a flood.

Niterider Trail Rat 2.0, Halogen, NiMH pack, 500 grams, $130
For over a decade, a halogen bike light with an attachable rechargeable battery was the brightest, most reliable commuting light. The battery could be recharged overnight and used regularly for several years before it stopped taking a charge.

The Trail Rat 2.0 is the least expensive light in this review to be bright enough to use on trails or on dark country roads. Its 10-watt halogen bulb puts out a bright flood light that lasts for 2.3 hours.

Comparing it to the high-end LEDs and HID lights though, the Trail Rat’s light seems rather dull and yellowish.
Niterider MiNewt, 3-watt single LED, Li-Ion pack, 235 grams, $160

The MiNewt is a brand new light that just arrived this fall, and I didn’t get excited about it until I took it out of the box and saw it in person.

The MiNewt is less than half the size and weight of a standard sized halogen or HID lighting system.

It has a super-bright, single 3-watt LED that uses a simple elastic attachment. The battery pack is small and straps onto the top of the bike stem. The single power button (on/off, high/low beam switch) is on the pack.

The battery is Lithium Ion, which means it is smaller and lighter than the Trail Rat and will last longer (3 hours on high or 6 hours on low).

For $30 more than the Trail Rat, the MiNewt is much brighter and more compact.

Light & Motion Arc Li-Ion, HID, Li-Ion pack, 470 grams, $500

High intensity discharge lights are the current kings of bike lights. When I go for a group mountain bike night ride, most of the serious riders use HIDs strapped to their helmets.

On the trail, the Arc lights up everything in front of you, making it possible to ride as fast as you can during the day. The same light comes with either a NiMH battery for $430 or a Lithium Ion battery for $500. The Li-Ion battery is 250 grams lighter than the NiMH (about half the weight).

The package includes both a handlebar and a helmet mount. With its long cord, the battery pack can either be strapped onto the top-tube of your bike or slipped inside a hydration pack or back jersey pocket. Either battery has a 3.5 hour burn time on high or 4 hours on low.Exposure Enduro Turbo, two 5-watt LED, integrated Li-Ion, 295 grams, $450

The sole U.S. distributor for Exposure Lights (an English company) happens to be located at Pease Tradeport in Portsmouth, so thanks to James and Steve, I’ve been able to try out this new light even though there are probably less than 50 of them in the country.

I think that this setup is the wave of the future. Two 5-watt Luxeon LEDs work in concert to give as much light as the brightest HID, all in one sleek, integrated package (no separate batteries or cables). One of the lights is a spot, the other a flood.
LEDs use a lot less juice than other types of lights, allowing the Enduro to be smaller and close to half a pound lighter than the lightest HID sets.

Burn times are 2.5 hours on turbo, 4.3 hours on high and 8.6 hours on low.

batteries explained
LEAD ACID: Your car or truck has a lead acid battery. It is big and bulky, with lead chambers filled with nasty sulfuric acid, and every few years it runs out of juice and needs to be replaced.

NIMH: A nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery is much more efficient than lead acid, and more importantly on a bicycle, much lighter. It also can go through many more cycles of charging and draining before it gives up on you. NiMH batteries do have a tendency to grow a memory over time (if you don’t drain the battery completely before you recharge, it will have shorter and shorter burn times). Luckily, most chargers these days are “smart chargers” that finish draining the batteries before recharging them.

LI-ION: Your laptop computer or cell phone uses Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries. I have a 9-volt lithium battery for my Dell laptop that allows me to use it at work all day without needing to plug it in. Your cell phone has a wafer-thin Lithium Ion battery smaller than a business card that allows you to text-message 10 percent of the U.S. population on a charge. Li-Ion batteries are incredibly light, compact and expensive. They can go through hundreds of cycles of recharging without getting permanently drained of power.

lightbulbs explained
LED: LEDs are tiny, light-emitting diodes that are extremely lightweight and use minimal amounts of battery power. Inexpensive 3-5-watt LED lights run from $20-50 and get up to 200 hours of run time out of a pair of garden variety AA batteries that are generally included in the pricetag. But they are not bright enough to light the way on trails or even on dark country roads beyond the ambient light of downtown areas. However, a new generation of high-powered single 1-5 watt LED headlights paired with the minimalistic Li-Ion battery are turning these assumptions on their heads and rivaling the brightest, most expensive lighting systems in terms of light output at a lighter weight and more compact design.

HALOGEN: If you’ve ever been to IKEA, you’ve been to the mothership of halogen lights. They are those little, cone-shaped lamps with a tiny, bright point of light that shines a powerful, focused light onto your Italian leather sofa. Halogen lights for bicycles are virtually identical to the IKEA variety, and you can Radio-Shack yourself a pretty bright light with a 20-watt lamp, a 12-volt battery and a toggle switch. The downside to halogen is that it is really not all that bright when compared to other options, it’s a battery hog and the lamps aren’t all that durable.

XENON: If you shop for a high-performance European car, you will generally have the option to upgrade to a high-zoot Xenon headlight system that provides an incredibly bright, focused light. Bike lighting systems experimented with Xenon bulbs in the 1990s, but the lamps were prohibitively expensive (when the lamp on my 1995 Night Sun brand headlight burned out less than a year after purchase, it cost more than $100 to change the lightbulb).

HID: Fenway Park is lit by HID lights. These are intensely bright, with an almost blue-tinged whiteness that creates a huge swath of daylight, even in the darkest woods at night. They don’t turn on instantly; they charge up to full brightness over a few seconds. But once they are fully lit, they use a relatively small amount of battery power for their light output. The first time I used an HID system was at a 24-hour mountain bike race in 1997. It was a prototype, and everyone else on the course was using halogen, which has a warm, yellowish glow. Nearly every competitor I passed on my first night lap stopped and got off the trail as I came up behind them and engulfed them in an eerie white light.