I downloaded the paper on the history of cycle/road safety in the 20s and 30s referred to earlier. A well written doc and very illuminating. The same arguments are in play today and the doc does explain the logical and consistent nature of the CTC's then stance on rear lights.
I've always been surprised how drivers can be so confident there isn't a hay wagon round the next corner of a country lane or any other unexpected obstacle. It just goes to show how vehicles have succeeded in clearing the roads of anything that might impede their progress. Obviously I do drive a car as well ride a bike and in my younger days I'd say I drove too fast from time to time. A couple of near misses put paid to that. Remember the hay wagon I mentioned? In mitigation that was on an A road and no accident occurred. I'd still have been a KSI though.
The argument that by putting DRLs on bikes you make things without them less visible is sound and one used in the 20s to oppose rear lights. Put the argument the other way round though. What if cyclists deliberately wore camouflage gear? Not such an unlikely proposal. I read some stuff recently that said that timetriallers were required to wear black, all over, to be unobtrusive on the roads.
My flashing lights are just the budget type from Halfords. To be useful in the daytime I think I'd have to buy more powerful ones. I would use dynamo lights except I don't have a hub dynamo on any of my bikes and the bottle one on the Brompton does drag on the wheel rather. Its like losing a gear. Also dynamo lights don't have a flash setting which is an odd omission. The other problem with LED lights is if the battery loses contact momentarily due to vibration then they go off - rather like the unreliability referred to in the 1920s as a reason not to make rear lights compulsory as the rider doesn't know they've gone out. This probably doesn't happen on the more expensive LED lights.
I'm really not sure. I'm loathe to try and compensate for others poor driving behaviour by changing mine but then I don't want an accident. I had a near miss on the bike on a roundabout in daytime over XMAS which MAY have been less of a near miss if I'd had a drl on the front BUT it would have had to be brighter than the one I have. I was wearing HiVis. I suppose I'm tending towards using drls
and therefore buying some posh lights.