Safety Discussion; It’s NOT “just  a flashlight” anymore!

Please forgive me if I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen any mention of children in this thread.

Children should never be allowed to use any light without proper supervision. It’s amazing how many otherwise-sensible adults will give a powerful light to a child without a second thought.

Children will stare into the beam, shine it in other people’s faces, light up moving vehicles, mess about with the batteries and generally do everything they shouldn’t.

In addition, a child’s eyes are more delicate than an adult’s, because the cornea and lens become less transmissive (especially of bluer wavelengths) as people get older, and it’s the blue wavelengths that do the most photochemical damage to photoreceptors.

Blue light damage is especially significant when it comes to long-term, cumulative exposure over a lifetime. You don’t have to focus enough energy on the retina to do thermal damage; you can do photochemical damage at much lower intensities, and that damage can be much more insidious.

Finally, there’s a tendency for children and even some adults to push through mild discomfort - overriding their aversion response - in order to keep staring into a light source that fascinates them in some way. You have only to look at all the people who end up being treated for eye injuries after staring at the Sun during a solar eclipse for proof of that.

That’s true, distractions to vehicles are very dangerous.
But it should be common sense that you don’t shine them at vehicles, just like you don’t throw nails on a road or throw rocks from a bridge.

There is that “common sense” thing again. To a lot of people it’s just “common sense” that the thing in your hand is “just a flashlight” and no big deal. I’ve had to educate an awful lot of people that 2000 lumens and up is more than “just a flashlight” and you have to have a bit of respect for the light and what it is capable of.

It’s not just blinding to that car passing by on the road, it can be blinding (at the right angle) to someone a couple hundred yards away or more because it has that much power. People simply do NOT understand that instinctively and as more and more powerful lights become common I think it is going to be a lot more important to educate people on light etiquette and actual safety.

A mis-aimed car headlight (at about 2500-3000 lumens) is a terrible thing from distances a half mile away. Imagine driving into someone’s 5000 lumen, turbo-head, throw monster even though they are a freaking half mile away and completely unaware that they are blinding you.

If we don’t start educating people now, the legal regulations will come, count on it.

It’s still “just a flashlight” even though it may be powerful.
Just like a rock is still just a rock.

Need to know what happens when a 18650 LiIon cell goes into thermal runaway & vents in side an aluminum flashlight during a controlled test? here you go.

The 18650 light:

The video: 18650 in Flashlight venting Test 1 - YouTube

also two 14500 lights after cell venting. ( this light below, the cell shot out through the front like a slug round. ( i have videos, but haven;t had time ti edit them to put them online yet, i will try to get them up soon.

This cheap tiny “3W police” AA light with a 14500 vented and blew out both ends. the cell disintegrated.

The heat was so intense in just a few seconds, it changed it from black to the brown anodizing color.

Not to be Mr Glass Half-Empty, but there’s a general truism that goes into discussions/debates like these.

People are idiots.

Take some time, let it sink in, then reread it again.

You take a decent light, not even a GT or anything, and some idiot will take it out and start shining it at oncoming drivers right before a curve, to watch the now-blinded driver almost crash, maybe just to get some yuks, maybe to video it for yootoob, who knows. Or slam it into “SOS” mode and go shining it over the water, or from a hillside, etc.

Lasers and airplanes. Flashlights and cars. You know it’ll happen when some inbred moron thinks it’d be oh-so-funny to take his new shiny flashlight out for a test-drive and do something retarded like that.

And bigger-idiot politicians are nourished by such incidents. It gives them purpose in life, to find a new scourge and propose Legislation™ to “deal with the problem”. And B’harni (pbuh!) help the rest of us…

And the fawning “news” media will fall into line right quick, interviewing the widow of the guy who wrecked after being blinded by an assault-flashlight, showing tables lined with lights with “attack bezels” and “tactical” this and “tactical” that. No foybezels here, only medieval-looking pointy attack bezels!

But hey, we should all be for “reasonable” flashlight laws. Maybe waiting-periods for flashlights. Battery-tube limits of only 3500mAH maximum. Background checks to make sure no mental-defectives could get their hands on flashlights. Limits on maximum OTF lumens (after all, no one needs a flashlight with 4000+ child-killing lumens, right?). Flashlight registration and licenses. You name it.

You think I’m being facetious? Just wait ’til some 85 goes and does something stoopit with a Q8 or GT or…

I’m cringing right now just thinking about it.

What if you shine a light into a drivers eyes and they are blinded and crash lol.

On a serious note i think i wrote about this the other day. None flashlight enthusiast buying high power flashlight with out any protection features. Also using high drain cells with no knowledge. Very different outcomes if you put a battery in reverse in a brand name light vs a BLF A6. The E40R i just reviewed has reverse polarity protection while the later does not. Also a very different outcome if you short circuit a high drain cells vs a protected cell.

As the number of users increases we will see more incidents that is how it works.

My little bros mate vapes and he had VTC5 in the vape i checked the cells for him and they where already down to around 2.7v each. I think that 2.5v is cut of for the VTC5 and he was still using them. I did have a smoke before checking lol.

Alas, “common” sense ain’t all that common.

Some idiot “kids” were just sentenced a few weeks ago for killing a guy after throwing chunks of concrete off an overpass at moving cars.

Years before, a kid in a safety(!) seat was killed by some idiots who threw a bowling ball off an overpass.

Me, years ago, I saw a half-brick bounce off the road in front of me and bashed the crap outta my car. Dent in the hood as it scraped over it, one wiper arm went flying off completely, other one was bent in the middle, had 3 holes in my windscreen that I could fit my fingers through, before the brick finally bounced up and over the remainder of my car. Got sprayed with shards of glass, was bleeding from my arm (just splinters, thankfully, and only little dots of blood), and that was it. Railroad bridge over an expressway.

See my previous post.

People are idiots.

Never forget that.

If something’s stoopit, some idiot will go and do it. Count on it.

Yep. Like I said…

Damn, that’s actually quite nice! :smiling_imp:

Excatly.
So what are you going to do?
Ban concrete and bricks so that nobody does that?
They will just find something else to throw and inconvenience everyone that uses concrete and bricks for their intended purpose.

You’re never going to solve people’s stupidity so the best that can be done is educate.

Heck, nobody seems to care that the D4 is a potential pipe bomb if the battery is accidentally put in backwards…

People should have that tattooed on ’em at birth.

You’re very wrong. There are many non-enthusiasts buying Maglite, Petzl, Led Lenser and similar brands because they seek quality tools.

Lithium-ion battery safety 101

Still, these can contain multiple 18650s and do over 1000 lumens.

My labtop contains multiple 18650’s, it depends how they are employed if they are dangerous or not.

And 1000 lumens unless very well collimated at very short range by a good quality thrower flashlight, like a well-modded 300 kcd Brinyte B158 focused at 1 meter instead of infinity (how many of your neighbours have one of those?) will not make you go blind, we humans are designed to look into the sun inadvertently every now and then (up to 130 kcd!) without getting eye damage.

Interesting thread. I'll be preaching to the choir here, for the most part, but OP asked...

Like any powerful tool, high-performance flashlights can be misused.

Nighttime in the country. Bubba has a beer in him. Bubba sez, "Hey y'all, watch this"

Or, mean kid/delinquent/bad seed has mommy's kewl new light, prowling the dimly-lit suburbs. Kid sez to companion, "Wanna see somethin' cool?".

Or, someone with truly nefarious intent knows exactly what he's doing.

Meanwhile, tired soccer mom/corporate CFo/CountyJudge is finally on their way home with the kids in the vehicle. Dim dashboard lighting and headlights reflecting from the road have their pupils well dilated for max night vision. They're instantly flash-blinded; hit squarely in the face by said bubba's flashlight brilliance or, worse, by stupid punks strobe. Bubba's idiocy results in simple flash blind. Punk kid's stupidity results in same, plus the disorienting effect of strobe. Nefarious criminal keeps the beam aimed precisely at the windshield, preventing any clear view of the road. Either way, worst case is driver/passenger(s) have a very bad night. They probably live. Or not.

Like any powerful object, some measure of responsible intelligence is implied in it's use

In grade school we were evaluated and graded on how well we followed directions. Safety documentation is widely available for LiIon cells. Every loose cell sold to consumers should come with safety instructions, IMHO.

When all else fails, read the directions. Think.

Seem to me, devices that don't have reverse polarity protection have a fatal design flaw. Pun intended.

Mistakes happen. The uninformed do get their hands on items of which they only know the basics. "Uhhh... this looks kinda like a battery. Weird lookin' one. Odd place fer a switch, here on the end of this fancy flashlight. Look, it unscrews! I think this weird battery will fit. Let's see if it works!".

We can use our imagination from here.

If we keep buying items that don't have the simple feature of reverse polarity protection, manufacturers have no incentive to remove that flaw.

I'm new to the HiPo light scene. It looks to me from a newbie's perspective that we're in a golden age of handheld lighting. Wish I had answers. It'll only take a few sensationalized news stories re: those "assault lights" before things are legislated to our detriment.

"Those weird batteries are dangerous. They don't even sell them a drug stores. The government should get involved".

"No one needs more than 100 lumens!"

"Those scary black flashlights will blow up! Think of the chirren!!".

"Ban them, before they start making bump-switches and shoulder things that go up!!!".

"Common sense flashlight laws!!!!".

The more I think about this, the more I think that from this point forward, any light that doesn’t have reverse polarity protection is going to be a FAIL in the “Real World Reviews”.

the tenor of this discussion escalated quickly from flashlight and battery safety into namecalling and psuedopunditry.
shame, really.