Blaze is a young company with an ethos focused on making city cycling safer. The Laserlight is its first product: a conventional front light equipped with a laser that projects the image of a bike onto the road ahead of you.
The idea behind it is simply to make you more noticeable to vehicles and pedestrians, in a way that sets it apart from any other light.
- Highs: Unique laser bike projection, finish
- Lows: It’s expensive
The light’s simple aluminium case is 100 per cent waterproof, and we can attest to its unfaltering performance in torrential rain. It feels like a premium product, too, although at £125 that should be a given.
There is no question that the Blaze is a good light, suited to urban surroundings; it’s not the brightest out there, but it can cope with unlit roads if pressed. The party piece, though, is the laser projection, which is visible in a range of wet or dry conditions, so even when there’s a lot of ambient light from street lights or the sun’s going down, the image of the green bike is obvious, searingly so when the sun has set.
During testing, while riding around the centre of Bristol, when stopped at traffic lights with the laser on we could see drivers curiously looking at it, but when actually riding with it turned on, it was less easy to gauge its effectiveness. No one drove into us, or obviously changed course to avoid hitting us, but there’s no way of telling whether a driver has spotted it and become aware of you, although that doesn’t mean they haven’t seen it…
Regardless, having any extra tool to make drivers take notice of you is beneficial – even if that awareness comes just from a fleeting glimpse of a green bike in their peripheral vision or wing mirror.
We have to confess that, at first, we felt like plonkers using it because it’s quite striking and unusual to see the laser on the road (although drawing attention to yourself is the name of the game), but after a while it’s comforting to know that you have an extra trick up your sleeve for being seen.
This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.