Leaderboard trail lamps

With a solid helmet lamp, bikers are safe at night. The Velomotion test shows: There are lights that you can have a lot of fun with on the trail, even for double-digit amounts.

Nocturnal mountain bikers and hardy long-distance commuters can't get by with normal bike lights. They swear by bright camping lights that can also be mounted elsewhere - for example on the helmet, where they complement (but do not replace) the mandatory bicycle lights. In principle, such additional lights are permissible as long as they do not dazzle other road users.

The big advantage of the helmet lamp is its high position, from which it can optimally illuminate the road. In addition, it always throws its light cone in the driver's line of sight, which is particularly good when cornering. Lights mounted on the handlebars do not shine far enough in the direction you are heading; the driver briefly steers into the darkness. Of course, this is also a small disadvantage on group tours – on the night ride you can always see how drivers are talking with their heads down so as not to blind each other.

Velomotion took a closer look at a number of current helmet lamps - models that are very differently priced, which of course is not always evident from their light image. In addition to handling and wearing comfort, the illuminated image is of course particularly interesting - we determined this on a forest path in complete darkness. The camera was set to fixed values ​​for aperture and shutter speed. We have set up the traffic cones at 10 meter intervals; the last "cone" is therefore 40 m away from the light source.

It should be noted that the human eye perceives the differences between the individual lights differently. In particular, the emitters that are weaker in the photos appear brighter in reality because the eye adapts to the lower light intensity. However, the color of the light and the illumination (broader/narrower light spot, etc.) are perceived as in the pictures.

Values ​​such as lux or lumen specified by the manufacturers are not very helpful because they say nothing about the distribution of the light. In principle, high values ​​are good, but a blindingly bright spot of light surrounded by absolute blackness can also hide behind it. When it came to the burn time, we relied on the manufacturer's information. And now have fun on the midnight trails...

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