Wheel reflectors are a hard no despite the fact they do a good job of illumination. Too much imbalance. And there are better ways like real lights. I always thought the pedal reflectors were really effective, impossible with SPD pedals. But reflective tape on shoes would be great.
Put me down in the camp of 'reflective doesn't work half as well IRL as it does on paper'.
Automotive headlights were not designed to work with reflectors with people behind them. The angles and the brightness are wrong.
By the time your retro-reflector has enough light to trigger the driver's optical nerve, you have an extremely good chance of being blinded or completely losing your night vision. Remember that the reflected light has to cover the same distance back to the driver as the headlight traveled to get to you, and will be similarly attenuated.
As I've said elsewhere - active lights that shine on you do a far better job at both capturing your motion like @wooglin states and on placing you in spatial context, i.e. how you relate to your surroundings. Get as far away from point sources as you can, and electronically blinky point sources in particular.
In inline skate context that pretty much means two things: a red downlight shining from the back-bottom of the helmet onto your shoulders and a second downlight from waist or fanny pack level. This is much easier to accomplish on a bike - a helmet downlight and a saddle downlight should do it.
Takeaway principles:
- Don't rely on reflection
- Don't rely on point sources, especially blinky point sources
- Shine the light on you where you can't see it.
EDIT:
I have a seatstay up light here and two bar lights, one of which illuminates the front wheel. OFC, the bike has black/white retroreflector tape on the HT, TT and DT but that is mostly a cosmetic thing I don't have a fork-mount light because the mount had broken, it has since been replaced.
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