Philips SafeRide lamp lights the way... 20131122_2217

The headlight on my recumbent trike is a Philips SafeRide LED light. I bought this lamp because of its sensible beam pattern. As with motor vehicle headlights, it throws a beam that is more-or-less rectangular, much wider than tall.

A rectangular beam pattern puts most light where it is needed, and minimizes the light shining in the eyes of oncoming drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. It is powered by four AA batteries, allowing for replacement on the road. It comes with rechargeable nickel metal hydride cells.

It has three design shortcomings. One, quite tolerable, is that the bottom part of the case, which mounts to a bar, is the door to the battery compartment. This might be intentional to keep the batteries dry, but it seems like a weak link in the mounting system. Another weakness regards the curved rubbery spacer supplied with it to allow it to be mounted on small-diameter bars. The spacer doesn't provide enough friction to prevent the lamp's rotating downward from road bumps. (maybe roughening its outer surface would make it better). My solution to the problem was to replace the spacer with wraps of one-inch-wide Gorilla Tape to build up the diameter of the mounting bar. The third problem is the fastener that secures the battery compartment cover: although strong enough, it is so small as to be difficult to work with. It takes an narrow Allen wrench.

It's not cheap: the price is about $180, though I got it when it was less costly. Even with its shortcomings I would buy it at its present cost because of its performance. Read about it on amazon: www.amazon.com/Philips-BF48L20BBLX1-SafeRide-Battery-Bike... .

This scene is on the Interurban Trail in Tukwila, Washington. It looks south. Just in back of me is the grade crossing of a railroad spur that serves nearby warehouses. This was near the start of a night ride that began behind the Embassy Suites hotel and went to the CenterPoint Corporate Park in Kent (east of the Boeing Space Center).

Hand-held iPhone photo shot while sitting on my trike.

Taken in: United States / Washington / Renton / Orillia (show map)

Taken on: November 22, 2013

Tags:

night

USA

tukwila

trike

triking

saferide

philips « less

Sets appears in: • Photography: Night & almost night • Triking: Interurban Trail

Groups appears in: • Night Images • recumbent cycles more » • Bike Light Photography • King County, WA: Largest County in WA; 14th in the US! • Tukwila • King County After Hours « less

Stats: 2,884 views / 4 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder