A few weeks ago there I was standing in a cycle shop gazing idly at the bike porn on display (it's all legal you know) when some fancy, new LED lights caught my eye. Now I know that I hardly want for lights what with my Lupine Wilma on the front and two Smart 1/2 Watt tail-lights at the back but the eye does wander! To cut a long story short I found myself quite taken with a couple of what looked like cold-cathode tubes or something similar; the sort of thing that you could strap to your frame for extra side visibility.
However I promptly forgot about them until I stumbled across the SpokeLit from NightIze. What a great idea and at the right price too; all you need to do is strap them to your spokes and you've instantly created the potential for a highly visible ring of light (if you're going fast enough that is).
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| Clever design makes them secure - so far! |
With a bit of searching I found them for sale at the Glow Company and figured that the green ones would be unusual enough to catch people's attention (although I was tempted by the disco version) and could barely wait for a dark night to try them out. Like tonight for example! Late out of work I had both spoke lights lit from the start and, anecdotally at least, it seems that motorists and pedestrians really do pay attention to the little things. Actually it's all that I can do to stop myself getting hypnotised by their up-and-down bobbing! To give you an idea of how they look in action here's one out of the many SpokeLit videos on YouTube:
Not bad I think? The worst part of it is that I've become a bit addicted to the Glow Company's website! I mean these guys are selling a glow-in-the-dark toilet seat and how cool is that? It's a serious temptation I can tell you and if I'm not careful I'll end up with a house that looks like Chernobyl on steroids!