10 good reasons to always have a flashlight with you.

Have a lamp with me to do what? This is what a lot of people think until the day they are in complete darkness and they have to move. At this moment, their journey begins for the best … and for the worst.

01 – FOR LIGHTING.
This seems entirely logical. What would be the use of a lamp if not to illuminate? The fact is that many of the people around me just do not have a lamp on them. Well, they have a smartphone. This is good but in some cases it is not enough (see reason number 09).
If they drop their keys in the street and they slip under a car, they will look for them for long minutes. Same in a nightclub, in the cinema, in a bar, in a theater, during a concert where someone drops something and it’s gone to feel the ground (with all that hangs on the floor) before finding this object. There is also the time when they go home at night and they do it 10 times before they can get their key into the lock. In short, a little light would help, right?

02 – TO SEE YOUR ROAD.
Imagine arriving for a great evening at your friends’ house. The corner is rather dark and you have to park your car twenty or thirty meters away. It is dark and you have to walk to their house without seeing anything in your path.
If you have a smartphone, it’s great! If he has no battery, it’s less great… For you the risk of walking in a big water puddle at best, mud at worst. There is, too, the risk of falling by stumbling your foot in a big stone or the edge of a step, or worse twisting your ankle by walking on it crookedly. Of course, you will not see anything that hangs on the ground, let alone tree branches at head height not to mention the manhole where you’re likely your heel caught in, isn’t it ladies? You will not see the garden hose left there inadvertently, nor the flowerpots and other garden gnomes. In short, these few minutes of walking may be very long without a way to see something.

03 – TO LIGHT INDOOR IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
I think this is one of the main reasons to always have a lamp on you. Imagine yourself in concert. The music is in full swing and suddenly no more lights. An alarm sounds and you have to take the emergency exits. Fortunately, most public places have emergency lights, at best that light up the room, at worst just showing the emergency exits. Without lamps on you, you will have to be careful where you put your feet because you can easily lose your balance by hurting your foot on a step or stumbling into a bag that someone in the panic would have left behind. You may even walk on someone who has fallen and who was hard to see in the dark.
Moreover, having no way to see where you put your feet, you put yourself at the same level of need as all people present. You will not be able to completely reassure the people who are with you. You will not be able to really help them because you are in the same need to see. With a lamp you can be more effective to reassure and guide others to the exit.

04 – TO LIGHT OUTDOOR IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
On a quiet departmental in the middle of the night, you are witnessing a road exit. The car is down the road all lights off. You would like to help the driver or at least be able to give precise indications of the state of this one to the rescue team, but you do not see anything there. You can not place your car to illuminate the scene with its lights. In short, apart from calling the rescue, install your warning triangle and wait until, you can do nothing more. If you plan to go there using your phone as a lamp. It is courageous but it is a risky bet because if your phone falls and breaks, in addition to no longer having a phone in case the rescue would have some difficulties to find you, you will not have any lamps to come back safety to your car.
That said in some cases, it is better to just call the rescue and do nothing more if it is to put you in a situation where you too will need help.

05 – TO FIND YOUR STUFFS IN A DARK PLACE (CELLAR, CLOSET, WARDROBE, GARAGE …).
A stupid thing, but you are looking for an object at home in a place you know well but it is too dark to see anything. That may be in your garage, in the evening, looking for a key of fifteen among dozens of others in which you have searched for five minutes. If you do not move your toolbox under the lamp of your garage to be able to read the number quickly on these, you will have all the difficulties of the world to find the coveted key.
In a kitchen cabinet where you are trying to find a box of extra fine peas among other boxes of natural peas. Hard to read the label when the box is at the bottom of the closet. All you have to do is to take out the boxes one after the other until you find the right one.
And the list of such situations is long, very long …

06 – TO REPORT YOUR POSITION.
And yes in the middle of the night on the move, on a walk, in a bivouac or other night activity nothing better than a small light to signal your position. You will be able to directly show the path to follow or show your position if you have been left behind.
But more than that, you will be able to show your position if you are in danger. If you are victim of an accident, down the road, you can easily show your position directly to help and also make them understand, shaking the lamp, that you are always aware if your smartphone has ran out of batteries.
With a powerful lamp, if you are stuck in your vehicle, you can even report your position to other drivers who might stop to help you.

07 – TO COMMUNICATE FAR.
This requires a language between you and your interlocutors but you can easily communicate with a lamp either by movement or by impulses as for the morse code at several hundred meters away. Very useful for giving directions or asking for help.

08 – TO BREAK AN ATTACKER.
So that only works if your lamp is more powerful than the ambient light and is able to turn on and off quickly. In these cases, a lamp with a button is more appropriate than a lamp with a rotating head.
The light must directly illuminate the eyes of the aggressor more than it goes out to plunge it back into darkness. He will not see anything for a few seconds, which will give you time to escape or hit him in the groin before running away. Of course once the lamp is off, you will have to run away without turning it on again. It will be easier for you because you have not been dazzled. Then, prohibition to use your lamp during your escape because you will give your position to your attacker. If you are far from all public places, hide in the shade far from all sources of light. Put yourself in a position where you can stand up to escape if necessary but where you can stay long minutes without moving and make no noise (even breathing). Above all, do not use your lamp or smartphone before being sure that your attacker is far away. Stretch your ears and listen if someone is moving around. Move very slowly and if possible only the head to check that nothing comes if you hear a sound. Avoid abrupt movements that your attacker might see out of the corner of his eyes.
At worst, take a heavy, hard object in your hand, like a big stone, with which you can hit on the head if your attacker gets back.
It is a technique to use only if you can not run away. If you can escape, do not try anything, run away quickly and far, far away.
To be effective with this technique, you must train yourself to catch your lamp and dazzle your aggressor, all without looking at your hands or your bag. You must be able to do everything with the touch. If your lamp is attached to your keys, during your escape, tighten your keys in your hand to prevent their noise indicating your position.

09 – BECAUSE A SMARTPHONE IS NOT A LAMP.
The smartphone is a great tool and relying on it to enlighten you may not be such a good idea. A phone has three major problems: it is fragile, it is often not waterproof and it serves us to maintain contact with the rescue. So, it is better that it be safe.
In addition, if you have to stay in line with the rescue, you will have trouble talking with them and illuminate the scene with the flash. Ok, there is the speaker mode that allows you to hold the phone at arm’s length to illuminate the scene while talking to the rescue or use a bluetooth headset. In this case, what do you do with the battery life if you need your phone for several hours or you are already at the end limit of battery level?
Plus, helping someone with a phone in hand to light you up is not super comfortable. Having a lamp in hand either, you will tell me, but you will be more inclined to hit the lamp everywhere because it is made for that. You can also, in most cases, put it somewhere and direct it towards you which will be more complicated with a smartphone.

10 – BECAUSE THERE WILL NOT BE ANYONE WITH A LAMP IN THE CORNER TO HELP YOU.
Whenever I used my lamp to help people I knew or met, their reaction was often “ah you are well equipped” or “you, you have everything on you, say so!”. And if I tell them “but you can buy one is not very expensive”, they told something like: “It will serve me for what?” or my favorite: “No need, you have one”…
The trouble is that the day they need light and I will not be there, they will galley like big.

In conclusion, there are lamps small enough to put with your keys or in a pocket. It will be quickly forgotten but it will be certainly useful when the time comes.