>Seeing something is not the same as having enough information about that thing to avoid an accident.

I'm really confused by this thinking. If there is a blinking white light pointed at you it means the cyclist is on the other side of the road, traveling with traffic in the opposite direction. If it is blinking red then you are approaching the cyclist traveling in the same direction as you, on your side of the road. If you see both lights blinking, with the white light on the left, then the bike is traveling left across your direction of travel. White on the right for the opposite. What information am I missing here? I feel like any of these combinations should be enough for a driver to notice a cyclist and to give them a sufficiently wide berth.

> If there is a blinking white light pointed at you it means the cyclist is on the other side of the road, traveling with traffic in the opposite direction.

Do drivers know this? Or do they think the flashing light is something else? Do they even see the flashing light? It's possible that eye movement across a scene means the eye travels over the cyclist in the off-time of the light.

Well you certainly have more information than if you don't see them at all.

But less information than with a non-blinking light. By blinking you are making it harder to extrapolate direction and speed from your observations.

You're saying "don't see them at all", but we don't know if that's what happens. We don't know that drivers don't see fixed lights, or see flashing lights more often. And we don't know what information they get from the lights.