Trek Commuter Pro Light shines bright without blinding oncoming traffic

Obviously you can point your light down… but it isn’t the same as a “cutoff” beam pattern here. With a typical circular beam pattern (e.g. Light and Motion Vis lights), if you point it down far enough to avoid light in oncoming riders eyes, the brightest point of the light is very close to your front wheel and doesn’t really shine much light down the road.

With a cutoff beam pattern, you can have the brightest part point of light a useful distance down the road, but then the light beam falls off very quickly above that cutoff so it doesn’t annoy oncoming traffic. All cars have this kind of beam pattern, and more bike lights should too. It’s obviously more important for “see the road” lights than dimmer “be seen” lights.

Pointing a light with a conical beam pattern down will accomplish the goal of keeping the direct light cone out of the eyeballs of oncoming pedestrian, cycle, and motor traffic, but it will also push the left and right edges of the cone down, depriving you of some side visibility. It’s polite, but less useful to you, especially at higher speeds where you really want that extra illumination to give you as much reaction time as possible.

I believe that StVzo regulations specify some minimum requirements about side illumination and front-facing beam cutoff angles, and there are a bunch of lights on the market that use a combination of directionally shaped optics and cutoffs that should satisfy these requirements. (e.g. the Fenix BC30 and BC25 are ones with which I’m personally familiar; I know some Glo-Worm lights use shaped optics but no cutoff; and I think Cygolite has a few as well.)

Even when you point down beams will still rise,
Theres quite a few good lights with a cutoff or a decent dip not to blind oncomming.

Outbound detour is probably the one to beat
Stzvo style lights will have the cutoff, but doesn’t guarantee a good beam pattern .

Some anti glare lights such as novsite 1600 and InFun gt 200 has a decent cutoff uet still good enough for single track duty .

Easydo has everyone beat in tech, itll auto switch the beam from high to low(cutoff) for oncomming traffic, sadly lumens are low(500 per mode) and it’s a pencil beam…so essentially trash pattern.

We need more light manufacturers to give is colored lens options like Amber, yellow and green , or atleast start ditching the blue hue white lights for a warm white..

It is not that simple. It takes some complicated optics to put the light where you want it. Most cheap lights use round reflectors that put out an even round pattern of light. If you aim the light to project far down the road, a lot of light will be wasted and blind other road users. If as you suggest you point it down, then you end up with a bright light a short distance in front making it less useful. Look at a car light, at least the good ones, and you will see how a well controlled light works. It puts out the light well down the road and has a sharp cutoff so as to not blind other road users. It also doesn’t let the light spill out too far to the sides, which will also blind other road users.